The Legacy of Public Buildings
A new high school emerges downtown
The old federal area of downtown contains some nice examples of government architecture. The Beaux-Arts style Post Office building was built in 1908 and reminds one of an era when scale and oramentation differentiated government buildings from commercial ones. Currently the building is undergoing a renovtion to serve as a charter high school. The Amy Biehl High School web site has some nice pictures of the interior during construction. For ninty-three years the US government occupied the build and now it will serve an academic role.
Dominici Federal Courthouse
In recent years, a new Social Security office and Forest Service office have been built downtown. While these buildings look like normal office buildings, they preserve a spirit of shared resources while promoting the center of the city.
The blue-roofed County Courthouse
On the north end of downtown, buildings have been appearing every couple years, creating a new law center. The legal field has always stressed the importance of the legal system. Locating the buildings downtown stresses this importance. The three courthouses began with the US Federal court house, now known as the Pete V. Domenici United States Courthouse was completed in 1998. This name honors current US senator Pete Domenici who spent his youth in downtown as the son of an Italian immigrant grocer. The stone faced exterior is reminiscent of the ancient Chacoan architecture found in Chaco Canyon.
The Bernillilo County Courthouse was constructed in 2001 and became the second courthouse to occupy the intersection of Lomas Avenue and Fourth Street. Having a distintive blue roof, it features an expansive atrium.
Metropolitan Court House
The last courthouse built at the intersection of Lomas and Fourth Street was the Metropolitan Court, completed in 2004. This building replaced a bleak and cramped structure directly across from the former County Jail. Adorning the entry court is an impressive sculpture of a legal scale. In the space of six years, this intersection has been vastly transformed.
McClellan park is a distant memory
While the addition of new courthouses to downtown are a positive thing, progress always has it's casualties. On the site of the Federal Court was a space called McClellan Park. Originally this formally landscaped park was the center of a thriving residential neighborhood. Close proximity with Route 66 and the railroad caused the housing to diminish until the few houses that remained became law offices for the Federal Courthouse. A stature, moved from a central loaction in the park to the back corner of the courthouse is a lone reminder of the former public nature of this land. While this may seem like a sad story of a lost neighborhood, Albuquerque's downtown was too compact to remain in it's original boundries. The McClellan park neighborhood was doomed a long time ago.