Today, June 12, the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee added the Cal-Linn Building to the State Register of Cultural Properties. If that name doesn't ring a bell yet, it will. Most people know the address by what happened inside it: this modest strip of brick and glass at the corner of California and Linn Avenues, one block off Central and Route 66, was the headquarters of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems — and the very first office of Microsoft.
For a few formative years in the mid-1970s, Paul Allen and Bill Gates were Albuquerqueans. They lived near the University of New Mexico and worked through the night in a leased suite on California Street, writing the software that ran MITS's Altair 8800 and shipping it to hobbyists across the country who had no idea they were living through the opening chapter of the personal computer revolution. That chapter started here, on the San Pedro Main Street corridor.
We know this building. We've known it for a long time, even when the broader world treated it as a footnote or a roadside curiosity rather than what it is: one of the most consequential addresses in the history of American technology. That's why, in April, RSPP submitted a formal letter of support for the Cal-Linn Building's nomination to the State Register and the National Register of Historic Places — one part of a nomination built on rigorous research by preservation advocates who did the real work of making the case.
That research didn't happen on goodwill alone. We want to thank Bernalillo County Commission Chair Adriann Barboa, who represents San Pedro as the District 3 Commissioner, for directing a portion of her district funding to support the historic preservation research behind this nomination. Investments like hers are exactly what it takes to turn a well-known local story into a documented, defensible, state-recognized one — and they're a model for the kind of public investment RSPP is always working to bring to this corridor.
Why this matters to a place-based economic development organization
We didn't write that letter because we're in the business of historic preservation for its own sake. We wrote it because we're in the business of building a corridor that works — economically, civically, culturally — and a building like this is an asset in every one of those categories at once.
The San Pedro corridor is a crossroads of generations: a working commercial district of small businesses, families, and long-time property owners, sitting on Historic Route 66, anchored by the New Mexico State Fairgrounds, and now home to a nationally significant site of innovation. State and national recognition protects the physical integrity of that story. It also does something more immediate for the corridor: it draws visitors, scholars, and technology history enthusiasts who already make the pilgrimage to see where Microsoft began, and formal listing will only deepen that draw. That's foot traffic, that's media attention, that's a stronger case for investment — all of it flowing to a corridor we've spent years working to reposition as a destination rather than a place to drive through.
This is narrative work as much as it is preservation work. Too often, this stretch of Albuquerque gets defined by what it lacks. The Cal-Linn listing is a reminder — official, on the record, reviewed and approved by the state — that this corridor has always been a place where extraordinary things happen. Our job now is to make sure that story is visible, told well, and connected to everything else we're building here: safer streets, stronger small businesses, and a community with real ownership over what comes next.
Congratulations to the preservation advocates who carried this nomination across the finish line, and thank you again to Chair Barboa for backing the research that made it possible. The Cal-Linn Building deserves this recognition. So does San Pedro.