Huning Highlands

Huning Highland Historic District (Huning Highlands) was Albuquerque’s first subdivision. It was platted in April of 1880 by Franz Huning–the same month as the coming of the railroad. Here store owners, like Mr. Learnard, who owned the music store, and Mr. Whitney, who owned the hardware store–and the teachers and the doctors of the new town–made their homes and built their lives.

As more and more frame and brick Queen Anne style homes were built, Huning Highlands came to resemble a quiet and settled Midwestern town. Residents had only to walk a short distance across the railroad tracks to buy groceries, straw hats or a hammer, or to attend a performance of "The Pirates of Penzance" at the Grant Opera House at Third and Railroad Avenue (renamed Central Avenue in 1907).

Huning Highlands retained its respectability through the 20s as a neighborhood that welcomed tubercular patients who flocked to Albuquerque to "chase the cure." World War II created such a demand for housing that many of the larger homes in the area were divided into apartments and the smaller houses were bought and used as rental properties.

Since the energy crisis of the 1970s created a demand for close-in housing, the neighborhood has begun to come back. This renaissance has been bolstered by a renewed interest in Albuquerque's older buildings.

Huning Highlands was named a National Historic District in 1979 and a city Historic Overlay Zone in 1981.