The Ruppe

History

B. Ruppe Drugs has been an Albuquerque business since 1883, the year that German immigrant Bernard Ruppe settled by accident in Old Town and began selling medicinals. The shop, the oldest continuously operating pharmacy in the state, moved from Old Town to Second Street before finding its current home south of Downtown on Fourth Street in 1965. Tom Sanchez bought into the business in 1949 after he earned a pharmacy degree from the University of New Mexico. Tom’s sister-in-law, Maclovia Zamora, went to work at Ruppe’s in 1981, when she settled back in Albuquerque after her husband’s military career concluded. From 1981 until the store was closed in 2011, Doña Maclovia Sanchez de Zamora provided herbal consultations and healing to many people across New Mexico and beyond. By her passing in 2017, she was a renowned natural healer who represented New Mexico culinary heritage and herbal healing traditions on the national stage. In 2017, Homewise purchased the building with guidance from the Barelas Community Coalition in order to redevelop the site as a revitalized space where traditional healers could renew Maclovia Zamora’s work.