The city’s Central Avenue is its Main Street—and it’s also the original Route 66. When moving out to New Mexico in 1962, my parents and I arrived on Central Avenue after coming west from the start of Route 66. We’d just driven in to the city in our big Oldsmobile, when we were suddenly rear-ended! The lady behind us had been staring into a hat (!) shop and forgot to brake in time. The car was so big and sturdy in its metallic body that I wasn’t hurt at all, just thrown onto the floor of the wide back seat.
The Route 66 craze brought a lot of tourists to the state and Central Avenue catered to their needs with restaurants, gift shops, and a slew of adobe motels with swimming pools. I remember those years hazily, but do recall that fast cars, food, and music were entering into our popular culture. I even remember several drive-ins, watching World War II and science fiction movies from the backseat while the dark outline of the Sandias hovered in the background.
Downtown Albuquerque, on Central Avenue.
Albuquerque is in Indian Country and the evolution of Pueblo Deco is one of the region’s more enjoyable architectural feats. There is an interesting connection between Indian arts and the Art Deco era. Although Art Deco began in France, its character changed when translated to a different country. In the United States, Art Deco is a proud mode for New York’s skyscrapers and other eastern public works and apartment buildings. When the style came to the Southwest, its creators saw an immediate affinity with indigenous architecture and building details.
The KiMo Theater on Central Avenue is one of the best examples of Pueblo Deco, and echoes can be found in other buildings up and down Central. Art Deco was an excellent style for appropriating folk and local imagery, using cheerful colors, and providing just the right amount of razzle-dazzle to perk up any neighborhood. Its exotic modernity makes downtown Albuquerque even more intriguing.
Detail of Pueblo Deco ornament on the KiMo Theater
The KiMo Theater in downtown Albuquerque, NM
Fort Worth, Texas, quite a bit southeast of the Four Corners, contains several memorable Art Deco buildings, including the Sinclair Building (1930) and the Kress Building (1936).
And on one side of Sundance Square is the wonderful Chisholm Trail mural, painted by Richard Haas in 1983. The mural is a nice piece of “trompe l’oeil” — it’s on a completely flat wall but looks like it’s a stone monument jutting out from the building. The mural commemorates the 1867-1875 cattle drives that went through Fort Worth.
