White Elephant Saloon

Dateca. 1900

Mediumgelatin silver print

Dimensions1 7/16 × 2 3/16 in. (3.6 × 5.5 cm)

ClassificationsPhotography

Credit LineAlbuquerque Museum, gift of Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico

Object numberPA1978.050.251

DescriptionA group of men stand outside the White Elephant Saloon at the southeast corner of Second Street and Railroad Avenue in downtown, Albuquerque, New Mexico. An adobe building with a "PALE ALE" sign is behind them. In the front of the group is a clean-shaven man wearing a fedora, bowtie, and thick, pressed three-piece suit and sits wide legged on a padlocked wooden box with "...S.B...UQ. N.M." painted on the front. He smiles and holds a large bottle of alcohol in a whicker woven case. A large cigar is in his left fingers. Behind him at the far left is a posturing clean-shaven man in a bowler hat, bowtie, and three-piece suit. Second from the left is Ernst Myers in a bowler hat, three-piece single-breasted suit with the suit jackets only buttoned at the top. He has a groomed and shaped mustache. A spotted dog sits in the center of the group of eight men held tightly on a leash by a man (third from left) in a cap, disheveled three-piece suit, watch chain attached to his vet, and a rifle case in his left hand. A cigar is in his lips beneath a mustache. Col. J.G. Albright (fourth from the left) wears a bowtie, fedora, three-piece double-breasted suit, and has a mustache. His collar is turned upward. Beside him is the athletic trainer Billy Mason (fifth from the left). He wears a bowler hat, bowtie, three-piece suit, pin stripped pants, and has a large, groomed and shaped mustache. He holds a rifle in a case in his right hand. Beside him is another man in a three-piece suit, watch chain, bowler hat and long thin tie. The man on the far right wears a newsboy flat cap, dark turtleneck sweater with an open thick woolen coat over it. He has a cigar in his mouth, thick mustache above it, and holds a large case in his right hand. In front of the group on the sidewalk, is a leather toolbox and bag.

The inscription on the back reads "Unidentified group of the White Elephant Saloon on the southwest corner of Railroad Avenue and Second Street about 1895. Founded in 1881, the White Elephant, located on the present site of the Sunshine Building, was Albuquerque's most famous early watering hole".

Railroad Avenue's name was changed around 1908 to what is now Central Avenue. Central Avenue also overlaps with the historic Route 66.

Glass plate negative is PA1990.013. 039.A

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