Santa Fe Railway Shops (Albuquerque)
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The former Santa Fe Railway Shops in Albuquerque, New Mexico consist of twelve surviving buildings erected between 1916 and 1924. The complex is located south of downtown in the Barelas neighborhood, bounded by Second Street, Hazeldine Avenue, Commercial Street, and Pacific Avenue. The shops were one of four major maintenance facilities constructed by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, the others being located in Topeka, Kansas, Cleburne, Texas, and San Bernardino, California. The railway shops were the largest employer in the city during the railroad's heyday. Currently they have been empty for years but a variety of plans have been proposed for the historic complex.
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[edit] History
Railroad shops and a roundhouse were first erected on the site in the 1880s, after Albuquerque was designated as the division point between the AT&SF railway and the Atlantic and Pacific Railway. After buying out the A&P in 1902, the Santa Fe Railway began expanding and modernizing the old A&P shops in 1912. The first buildings to be completed were the roundhouse, storehouse, power station, and freight car shops, all of which were located south of the present complex near the present Bridge Boulevard overpass. These structures have since been demolished, but the subsequent buildings completed after 1915 are all still standing.
[edit] Buildings on the site
By far the largest building is the Machine Shop, which spans the full width of the site from Second to Commercial and contains about 145,000 square feet of floor space. The Machine Shop was completed in 1921 and was considered at the time to be at the cutting edge of industrial design. The building has a steel structure, with uninterrupted glass curtain walls on the north and south faces and more substantial reinforced concrete facades on the east and west sides. The expansive main bay of the building is 57 feet high with several overhead cranes for lifting locomotives and is floored with wooden blocks to cut down on noise.
The smaller Boiler Shop, which was completed in 1923, stands to the north of the Machine Shop and is similar to it in design and appearance. Obscured by the Blacksmith Shop to the east and the fire shed to the west, the Boiler Shop is not easily visible from the street.
The oldest building still standing on the site is the Blacksmith Shop, which was built in 1916. It is situated along a north-south axis on the east side of the complex (near Commercial Street), north of the Machine Shop. The Blacksmith Shop is similar to the later buildings but with facades of brick rather than concrete.
Another significant structure is the Fire Station, a rustic, Mediterranean-style building with sandstone walls, crenelated parapets, and an asymmetrical corner tower. It stands on the northwest corner of the complex, near the intersection of First and Second streets. Built in 1920, it is the oldest surviving fire station in Albuquerque.
[edit] Future plans
Various plans have been discussed for the Santa Fe shops, including a transportation museum to be called the Wheels Museum, a multi-use retail and exposition center, and a state-of-the-art digital film studio. So far, none of these ideas have gotten off the drawing board.
