Santa Fe Railway Shops (Albuquerque)

The former Santa Fe Railway Shops in Albuquerque, New Mexico, consist of eighteen surviving buildings erected between 1915 and 1925.

The first buildings to be completed were the roundhouse, storehouse, power station, and freight car shops, all of which were located south of the surviving complex near the present Bridge Boulevard overpass.

The railroad decided to locate its diesel repair facilities at the Cleburne and San Bernardino yards, scaling back operations in Albuquerque to around 200 employees.

By far the largest building at the railyard is the erection and machine shop, which spans the full width of the site from Second to Commercial and contains about 165,000 square feet (15,300 m2) of floor space.

At the time it was considered to be at the forefront of industrial design, comparable to the Glass Plant at the Ford River Rouge Complex in Michigan.

[1] 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.

Another significant structure is the fire station, a rustic, Mediterranean-style building with sandstone walls, crenelated parapets, and an asymmetrical corner tower.

In 2011, a California-based developer was selected to lead the redevelopment of the site,[4] but the contract was canceled in 2018 after little progress during the intervening years.

Mayor Tim Keller tore up the contract at a press conference and announced that subsequent redevelopment efforts would be led by the city.

[6][7] In 2013, the city spent $900,000 to repair and stabilize the Blacksmith Shop building, hoping to rent it out for special events.

Railroad workers forging a part in the blacksmith shop, 1943
Interior of the main bay in the erection shop
The boiler shop and transfer table
The fire station in 2014
The railroad shops as seen from the Barelas neighborhood