In the Dark in New Mexico
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It was during the 1920s, a dazzling decade filled with glitz, glamour and the Great Gatsby, that America succumbed completely to the spell of Hollywood. Movie theatre developers and designers perfected the art of the "picture palace," unbelievably extravagant and exotic architectural environments intended to transport audiences into a fantasy of suspended reality.
Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles led the way with a score of dramatic theatres, including the Egyptian of 1922, Grauman's Chinese Theatre of 1927 and the Pantages of 1929. Every major American city built great movie palaces that reflected local history and architectural tradition. Thus, San Antonio boasted the Spanish/Moorish Majestic Theatre (1929) and the Meso-American style Aztec Theatre (1926), and Albuquerque would create the KiMo.
In Albuquerque, the dawn of the Sunshine Theatre brightened on three other cinemas built downtown before 1930 - the Mission, Río and KiMo. While the Mission and Río theatres have faded into the realms of memory and archives, the KiMo has endured as New Mexico's most famous and beloved "picture palace," a cornerstone of downtown Albuquerque and a classic example of Pueblo Deco architecture.
Architect Carl Boller's concoction of Pueblo, Navajo and other Southwestern design motifs (not to forget the fabulous buffalo skull lights!) opened on Central Avenue in 1927. A prize of $500 was awarded to Isleta Pueblo Governor Pablo Abeita for suggesting the name KiMo, which means "king of its kind." Mythical movie memories in the KiMo were created in part by the grand Wurlitzer organ, which serenaded the silent pictures, and also Albuquerque artist Carl Von Hassler's lobby murals of the Seven Cities of Cíbola. We can thank builders Oreste and Marie Bachechi and the City of Albuquerque for creating and preserving this classic entertainment cathedral to this day.
Fortunately for New Mexico cinema patrons, Carl Boller did not exhaust his repertoire in the KiMo. The Kansas City-based architectural firm of Boller Brothers specialized in designing Southwestern and Western movie theatres during the 1920s and '30s, creating 90 cinemas in California, Missouri and New Mexico. Boller was hired to design a Southwestern theatre befitting the self-proclaimed "Indian Capital of the World." Gallup's splendid El Morro Theatre of 1928 on Coal Avenue is a professional example of the Spanish Colonial Revival style, which had come into favor after the Mission Revival style swept the Southwest after 1900. The traditional Spanish themes of tile roofs, curvilinear parapets and baroque "carved" accents in Gallup's El Morro Theatre anticipated the more elaborate Spanish-style Lensic Theatre in Santa Fe by two years.
