23-02-2025
The Cadillac of cultural preservation: Architect Mark Baker unveils plans to convert a historic dealership into UNM's new Route 66 research center
Feb. 23—Award-winning Albuquerque architect and entrepreneur Mark Baker has unveiled plans for the Route 66 National Research Center — a new, federally funded initiative of the University of New Mexico, which will serve as a global mecca for Route 66 scholars under the umbrella of UNM's library system and its Center for Southwest Research.
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.
The full scope of the Research Center's activities will be determined by a future director, who has not yet been named.
This project is separate from the Route 66 Visitor Center. The Visitor Center, an unrelated initiative of Albuquerque's Department of Arts and Culture, is community-focused, whereas UNM's Research Center is being planned and designed primarily to serve the needs of scholars.
A quartet of national nonprofit organizations — Research Route 66, the Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership, the Route 66 Consortium and the Route 66 Centennial Commission — have been teaming up over the course of three years to bring the center to life. The idea of a national research center was the brainchild of Research Route 66.
"This is a group of archivists, curators and researchers, representing 10 academic institutions and museums in the eight states along Route 66," said William Thomas, who heads the Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership and serves on the Centennial Commission.
UNM was selected due to its elite status as a Carnegie-classified "R1" research institution and its prime location on one of the best-preserved segments of Route 66.
In turn, the executive director of UNM's Lobo Development Corp., David Campbell, said Baker was selected as the center's architect, in part, for his longstanding ties to the local community, as well as for his reputation of balancing historical preservation with architectural innovation. Lobo Development is UNM's real estate arm.
A classic redefined
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."
Burk designed the building "during an era when modernism was sweeping through the growing metropolis," according to a 2015 case study by Ryan Morton.
"With its location on historic Route 66 and its dramatic glass and stone façade, the new dealership acted as a billboard for the automobile in mid-century Albuquerque," Morton wrote.
Despite its cultural significance, Burk's building found itself on the chopping block.
"UNM will potentially seek to demolish the original Galles building in the next few years," Morton wrote in 2015, "due to its lack of practical function for university use and operational costs."
Ten years later, the building is getting a new lease on life, courtesy of Baker.
"It has some really wonderful architectural elements that we're going to be saving, like all the glass on the south side, which I think is the signature for the building," Baker said. "Inside, there's a vintage map, and it has this cool 1950s starlight ceiling that we're saving."
Baker added, "We went through and did an audit and identified what's contributing to the history and significance of this building, and we're doing a very light touch."
Campbell is thankful Baker is leaving so much of the original building intact.
"We believe this gives us the opportunity to preserve an important historical building in a way that's historically appropriate," he said.
Baker has won praise for his renovations of other historic structures.
In 2016, he turned New Mexico Highlands University's 1905 Trolley Building into the site of a cutting-edge Media Arts program — a project that earned him four prestigious architectural awards, including New Mexico's top honor for contemporary architecture, the Jeff Harnar Award. In 2017, he adapted John Gaw Meem's Streamline Moderne-era building, 505 Central, for reuse as a food court and lofts. In 2020, his renovation of NMHU's historic Rodgers Hall won him an American Institute of Architects award.
These adaptive reuse successes have prepared Baker for the Research Center project, his highest profile commission to date.
'The Course of Life'
While functionality and sustainability are Baker's top priorities, a few artistic flourishes will make the building stand out.
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.
"As you go by, it really exemplifies that movement and that travel and that journey," Baker said. "In a way, it's a sculpture, but it's part of the architecture."
Like the repeated shapes of a Donald Judd installation, Baker's enframed neon squares will appear to change angles as drivers glide past them, calling attention to the essential truth that everyone is a four-dimensional being.
"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."
Sometimes that journey is fun, but not always. And while Baker's "Course of Life" is eye-catching, its restrained, minimalist vocabulary seems intended to be emotionally neutral, capable of encompassing Route 66's varied meanings for multiple communities.
One road, many stories
"For some people, Route 66 just represents the ultimate road trip," Baker said. "But for others, it was a chance to change their lives. People ran from the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma to find a new, better life."
John Steinbeck portrayed such Dust Bowl refugees in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1939 novel, "The Grapes of Wrath."
Campbell of Lobo Development said, "Our history has uplifting, happy aspects, but it also has some very challenging aspects, (including) notions of what Route 66 did to Native American sites along the way."
"When I first got involved with this (Research Center), the 'Barbie' movie was just out," Campbell said. He had visions of "people driving down the road in pink convertibles, maybe with roadside venues and drive-in movie theaters, in a very happy Westward movement."
"But if you watched 'The Green Book,'" Campbell continued, "you learned that travel for African-Americans in the United States was a huge challenge, so much so that they had to write books so that African-Americans would know where they could stay along the road."
The center aims to preserve these difficult histories, as well as more nostalgic ones.
Thomas of the Road Ahead Partnership and Route 66 Centennial Commission also emphasized the multiple narratives Route 66 encompasses.
"It helped win World War II by serving as the primary artery for transporting men and materials to the Pacific theater," Thomas said. "Then it was used by many of those same soldiers as the way back home, leaving them with memories that motivated them to take their families on what became the great American road trip vacation during the 1950s and '60s."
"In the 1970s and '80s," Thomas continued, "the road became an object lesson of the sometimes negative impact transportation systems can have. Countless communities across it learned — the hard way — that the progress envisioned by the Interstate Highway System wasn't progress for everyone."
"Talk to almost anybody, and they will have a Route 66 story," Campbell said. Himself included.
"My dad was in the military, and in 1969 we moved here from Kansas," he said. "As we were coming through the Sandia Mountains on Route 66, it was July 20, 1969, and man was landing on the moon that day. So, we scurried into the first motel we could find and watched that 'the Eagle has landed' on a grainy black-and-white television."
The Route 66 National Research Center looks to honor the road's history while contributing to its present development.
"As it now approaches its 100th Anniversary, Route 66 serves as an example of how everything old can be new again," Thomas said.
"Towns and cities are embracing its spirit and using it to develop their local economies once more — following its original economic purpose from its genesis in 1926," he said.
Baker's creative redesign of a modernist car dealership embraces this "everything old can be new again" spirit. With its thoughtfully considered architectural details, it endeavors to become a landmark in its own right, honoring Albuquerque's architectural heritage while embracing the future.
"It's such an exciting project for me," Baker said, "because I consider Route 66 the most significant and iconic of all the man-made structures in Albuquerque."
