West San Jose School was built in 1936–7 by the now-defunct Bernalillo County school district. The existing school in the area, South Second Street, was a converted church with only three classrooms and was in a bad location adjacent to the railyard. Due to the inadequacy of this facility, many of the neighborhood students had been forced to attend the similarly crowded Barelas School, or the East San Jose School (the latter requiring a dangerous railroad crossing). The county superintendent, Margaret Easterday, wanted to replace the Barelas and South Second Street schools with a large new facility, but had only $2,500 available for the project.[3] Nevertheless, the district purchased land for a new school in February 1936.[4]
Easterday initially planned to build a small two-room school as a stopgap measure, expanding it when funds allowed. However, this turned out to be unnecessary thanks to the unprecedented public works funding available from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. With assistance from Governor Clyde Tingley, the school district was able to secure a grant of $53,000 from the Works Progress Administration to build the school. The construction project, using adobe bricks and traditional building methods, lasted ten months and employed 70 workers.[3] The school opened to students in the fall of 1937, after which the South Second Street and Barelas schools were closed.[5]
In 1949, West San Jose was absorbed into Albuquerque Public Schools along with the rest of the county system.[6] In the late 1950s the name was changed to Riverview Elementary. Both Riverview and the nearby Coronado Elementary were closed in 1975 when a new school, Dolores Gonzales, was built.[7] In 1977 the unused school was converted into a job skills center under the control of the Technical Vocational Institute (now Central New Mexico Community College).[8] The school was renovated in the early 2000s and now houses the library and archives of the National Hispanic Cultural Center.[9]
