Kelly’s Brew Pub

The Jones Motor Company is a modern building type invented to serve the mechanized logic and needs of the automobile.

When it was erected in 1939, the building stood at the eastern end of Central Avenue, where Route 66 entered Albuquerque. It catered both to arriving motorists and to residents of East Mesa suburbs like the Monte Vista and College View Additions. Ralph Jones, the eponymous owner, was well positioned to recognize the economic possibilities of America’s simultaneously local and national reliance on the automobile. The businessman and one-time mayor would serve in the 1940s as president of the Route 66 Association, president of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, and chairman of the New Mexico State Highway Commission.

The combined Texaco service station and Ford dealership is built of concrete and hollow clay tile, and finished with white stucco, expanses of plate glass, and a brick coping. The stepped tower with the Ford logo acted as a hinge between the curved automobile showroom towards Central Avenue on the right and the station garage towards a secondary street on the left, while the corner location gave cars access from both sides to the fuel pumps placed alongside the Texaco sign. The building’s Streamlined Moderne architecture promised the customer both efficient service and contemporary styling. It was probably designed by Thomas Danahy, an Albuquerque native who had studied at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

In 1946, Jones’s expanding business led him to add a second showroom on the west side of the original showroom. Following a mobile market, he sold the building in 1957 and moved his dealership to another location. The structure passed through multiple hands and uses before being acquired by Kelly’s Brew Pub in 1999. The current owners restored the Ford logo, the Texaco gas pumps and original sign, and garage doors. The Jones Motor Company was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.