Bruce Dietrich wrote the application for registration of Rolland’s Drug Store in Carrizozo to the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 2003. The property, built in 1924, was accepted as an example of a utilitarian commercial structure of the time. Its appearance and materials that make up its façade were meant to ooze stability, respectability and no-nonsense in economic insecure times, as it had in countless communities across the nation in the first decades of the 20^th century. Being in Carrizozo, however, meant that certain vernacular and provincial touches were added that were and are particular to the once-bustling railroad hub and county seat.

The building was built by Frank English, the famous hometown contractor. Red brick was paired with adobe formed from dirt on site. Ornamentation was conspicuously absent; evidence of efficiency meant to reflect the owner’s practicality and business sense. A canopy allowed shade for those strolling along the front of the store and large display windows with a recessed entrance that hopefully would pique the interest and funnel potential customers inside what was then one of two drugstores in the town.

Perhaps the most distinctive features of the building are the 532 square prisms above the windows. Called a light screen and made by the Luxfer Prism Company in Chicago, the rows of small, decorated pressed squares of glass were meant to increase light coming in from the outside by refracting it inward, thus eliminating the need for artificial light. The floral design used in Rolland’s was designed and patented by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1897.

The nomination also noted the property’s significance due to its owner, businessman Arthur (Art) J. Rolland. He started the drug store in 1906 at another location. In 1923, a drought devastated the cattle industry in the area, causing numerous bank failures, including that of the First National Bank of Carrizozo. Rolland was the vice president of the bank but, according to Dietrich, he avoided the stigma of failure when he was able to pay off his personal debts. He was able to rebuild his business, hiring French to build the one-story building on what is now 12^th Street.

Rolland and his business were able to survive the Great Depression and the loss of the railroad, largely in part to Rolland’s personal reputation and integrity, forged in difficult times by his magnanimous offering of hiring children as young as 10 years old to work as soda jerks so that their families had an added source of income.

Rolland died in 1950 and subsequent owners kept the once drug store, now pharmacy, open into the 1970s. Today it is privately owned. Its appearance has been changed over the years but its staunch and solid appearance remain and harken to prosperous days past and in the making as Carrizozo seeks to restore and revere its historically significant properties.

Dietrich notes that a magazine writer named Quentin Reynolds fell under the spell of Carrizozo of the early 20^th century through the actions and persona of Arthur Rolland. Writing in his book, “The Wounded Don’t Cry,” Reynolds wrote: “…I have discovered…a little place called Carrizozo, New Mexico, where I want to go when I die. I want to go there and gang around the drug store and sneak behind the prescription counter with Art Rolland and have a nip of what he calls Old Granddaddy then type out his prescriptions for him…”

Rolland’s Drug Store and other historic Carrizozo properties can be seen anyone seeks to drive off the main drag that passes the court house onto the streets where this and other Frank English commercial and residential buildings sit as testaments to the town’s colorful past and characters.