An award-winning architect recently unveiled plans for the federally funded Route 66 Research Center at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
The center, part of UNM’s library system and its Center for Southwest Research, will be housed in a former Cadillac dealership.
Architect Mark Baker is behind the plans. Among his numerous award-winning projects is 505 Central, a John Gaw Meem streamline moderne building reused as a food court and lofts.
Baker uploaded a short video of a rendering of the transformed building here on Instagram.
The Albuquerque Journal, which has artist’s renderings of the Route 66 center, reported:
Gracing the corner of University and Central — the old Route 66 — the Research Center will house an archive of documents and materials related to the storied highway, including oral histories, and will host academic conferences. As Baker’s floor plan and renderings show, it will also feature an exhibition space and a bookshop. […]
To create the new Research Center, Baker will transform the Galles Motor Company Building, a former Cadillac dealership.
“The building is important in itself,” Baker said. “It’s a 1956, mid-century modern (building) by William Burk, who was a fairly prominent architect.” […]
On the exterior, Baker will install “The Course of Life,” an architectural feature consisting of a series of evenly spaced metal frames containing neon lights. […]
“It’s an homage to the Route and its neon signs, but it’s also about the metaphor of Route 66,” Baker said. “Wherever you get on (Route 66), there’s a beginning, and there’s the end, and then there’s the journey in between.”
The research center is the brainchild of the Research Route 66, the Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership, the Route 66 Consortium and the Route 66 Centennial Commission.
The research center is not associated with the yet-to-open Route 66 Visitors Center on Albuquerque’s west side.
(Screen-capture image from Mark Baker video of renderings of the planned Route 66 Research Center in Albuquerque)