Murray Hotel

At five stories, the Murray Hotel was the tallest building in town, and reflected the growth spurt experienced by Silver City as it recovered from the Great Depression.

New Mexico’s Earliest Architecture

Sometime between 1 AD and 500 AD, early New Mexicans shifted from subsisting exclusively by hunting-gathering, to a seasonal mix of hunting-gathering and agriculture.  Gradually, agriculture became the major strategy. New Mexicans became farmers and began to build more permanent homes and villages: New Mexico’s first architecture.

Mesa Public Library 

The architecture of Mesa Public Library is composed of two major elements: a long, wedge-shaped volume pointing north, and a segment of a circle that emphasizes the panorama of the Jemez Mountains.  

White Rock Visitor Center

The White Rock Visitor Center provides a gateway to near by national monuments and preserves.  The building uses materials that recall natural bluffs and mountain cabins. 

Santa Fe Art Institute

The Santa Fe Art Institute, designed by Legorreta and Legorreta Arquitectos, is one of the most colorful buildings in all of Santa Fe. It is an outstanding example of Mexican Minimalism architecture.

UNM Central Campus

The University of New Mexico was founded in 1889 when New Mexico was still a territory of the United States. The architectural development of the central campus balances a regional, Southwestern design identity with 130 years of architectural design evolution.

Erna Fergusson Library

Erna Fergusson Library is composed of three types of volumes:  a low rectangular box; high, half-arched volumes; and a tower. Each of these shapes has a different form and function.

Kelly Residence

This house, built in 1937, was designed by John Gaw Meem, one of New Mexico’s most well-known architects of the early 20th century. It is a good example of Meem’s Territorial Revival style residences.

Old Albuquerque Municipal Airport Building

The Old Albuquerque Municipal Airport building was an important stop in the early transcontinental flights between Chicago and Los Angeles. It was the only major airport in the nation built in the Spanish Pueblo Revival style.

KiMo Theater

In the age of elaborate film palaces, the KiMo Theater fused the symbolism of Native American cultures with the exotic qualities of the Art Deco style to produce what New Mexicans call Pueblo Deco.

Borowski Residence

The Borowski Residence design emphasizes home, hearth, and light. A simple palate of materials and careful detailing are used to execute three levels of space in an unusual way.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

On a hill at the edge of the Moreno Valley in northern New Mexico, two
curved, white planes soar toward the sky. Where the surfaces almost meet is the Peace
and Brotherhood Chapel, the major feature of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

UNM Dreamstyle Arena (“The Pit”)

The University of New Mexico’s basketball arena is known nationally for the atmosphere created by the sunken court. The noise level created at a game generated the name, “The Pit.” However, the most interesting architectural aspect of “The Pit” is the way it was built.

Roosevelt Park

Roosevelt Park is one of the Southwest’s best examples of New Deal Landscaping. Originally a sandy, garbage-strewn arroyo, the park design drew from English landscape imagery.

Occidental Life Building

The most well known, and perhaps the only, Venetian Gothic Revival building in New Mexico, the Occidental Life Building brings Venice to Albuquerque.

Atrisco Heritage Academy High School

The architecture of Atrisco Heritage Academy High School is as bold and proud as were the original settlers of the Atrisco Land Grant given by King Philip II of Spain to colonists in 1598.

The Lodge Resort & Spa

The Lodge Resort in Cloudcroft is one of the oldest resort hotels in New Mexico and has been in operation almost continuously since 1911.

U.S. Historic Courthouse

This 1930 courthouse was the first one built in Albuquerque that acknowledged a southwest architectural heritage by using earth-toned exterior materials and artistic details taken from Native American motifs.

Albuquerque Museum

The Albuquerque Museum has served as a major attraction for the city since it outgrew its first home, at the Sunport, becoming more dynamic over the years . . .

“Big I” Interchange Landscape

The “Big I,” the interchange of I-25 and I-40, located in the center of Albuquerque, is greatly enhanced by one of the largest landscape projects in the state, over 100 acres….

Open Space Visitor Center (City of Albuquerque)

Albuquerque’s Open Space Visitor Center introduces visitors to the Rio Grande Bosque, nature-related art, a native-plant demonstration garden, agricultural fields, the Piedras Marcadas Pueblo archaeological site, and stunning views….

Main Library (Albuquerque Public Library)

George Pearl, FAIA, the designer of Albuquerque Public Library’s current Main Library, was a leader in the effort to find a modern architecture that spoke of the special qualities of the Southwest, what we now call “Regional Modernism.”…

Park Square

Park Square is considered one of Albuquerque’s purest examples of Modernism in a commercial high-rise. The building exhibits many Modernist design principles: expressed structure, a minimal palette of materials, consistency of façade design on a grid, and well-studied proportions….

El Vado Auto Court

One of the best examples of a pre-WWII tourist court on Route 66, El Vado Auto Court was built in 1937 in anticipation of the rerouting of the historic road . . .

Hotel Andaluz (Hilton)

Hotel magnate Conrad Hilton was a native of San Antonio, New Mexico. Owner of several hotels in Texas, Hilton made this his first after the Great Depression and the first modern, high-rise hotel in the state….

Simms Building

The Simms Building was the first International Style, high-rise building in New Mexico. It was representative of the post–World War II coming-of-age of Albuquerque as a modern city. . . .

First Plaza Galleria

Designed by famous Chicago architect, Harry Weese, in a “u” shape, this building at the eastern edge of downtown Albuquerque opens its plaza to a view of the Sandia Mountains. . . .

National Hispanic Cultural Center (District)

The National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) is dedicated to the preservation, promotion, and advancement of Hispanic culture, arts, and humanities. The campus is composed of five buildings and a number of landscape features. The new buildings and landscapes are contemporary interpretations of a variety of styles related to the U.S. Southwest, Latin America, and the Iberian Peninsula. . . .

Rio Grande Nature Center and Preserve

The Rio Grande Valley is a major migratory bird flyway and the Albuquerque Bosque is part of one of the longest Cottonwood forests in the world. As architect Antoine Predock has said of this site, “The building can be thought of as a permanent viewing blind set up with controlled apertures offering specific views of the wildlife in its natural habitat.” . . .

La Luz

This residential complex is situated on a sloping plane with breathtaking views of the Rio Grande Bosque and Sandia Mountains. . . .

First National Bank

At 141′ high with nine stories, the First National Bank was Albuquerque’s first skyscraper. In 1917, James Madison Raynolds became president of the bank and hired Trost & Trost to design the new bank building. . . .