Barelas Community Center

Albuquerque, United States

Open to visitors

The interior is normally open, possibly ticketed.

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The Barelas Community Center is a historic community center in the Barelas neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico, built between 1940 and 1942 by the National Youth Administration (NYA), a New Deal agency that provided jobs and vocational training for young Americans. Designed by local architect A. W. Boehning in the Pueblo Revival style, the building is a one-story, U-shaped structure modeled after a traditional Spanish-style hacienda, with a central courtyard surrounded by a single row of rooms. Its distinctive features include buttressed adobe walls, projecting vigas, and wooden lintels, all constructed using labor-intensive traditional methods of hand-made adobe bricks and hand-cut vigas. Built in cooperation with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to serve the majority-Hispanic neighborhood and dedicated during the LULAC national convention in June 1942, the center was one of Albuquerque's first two community centers. The building contains a game room, girls' club room, kitchen, and large community room with a stage, decorated with six Native American-themed murals painted in 1957 by Albuquerque Indian School students under Teofilo Tafoya's direction. A gymnasium added in 1977 was later connected to the main building in 2004. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021, the center remains in active use.

Movement

Pueblo Revival Style architecture

Type: community center
Heritage: National Register of Historic Places listed place
Place: Albuquerque, United States

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Location

35.07779, -106.65597