PHOTOS BY ROBERT RECK
The core of the “Big I” juncture comprises eight flyover bridges designed to move traffic efficiently and safely in all four directions. Made from 650 pre-cast concrete segments weighing 80 tons each, the flyovers are beautiful and functional, arching elegantly over the heart of the city. To landscape both interstates’ medians, local landscape architectural firm Morrow, Reardon, Wilkinson, Miller, Ltd. utilized xeriscaping and hearty native plantings to complement the sky-blue and earth-tone colors used on the flyovers and sound-barrier walls.
When it was originally built in 1966, Albuquerque’s Big I interchange, where Interstates 25 and 40 cross, was designed to move 60,000 vehicles a day. By the year 2000, that number had climbed to 300,000, and bottlenecks during peak commuter times were increasing. Renovating that exchange was New Mexico’s largest public works project to date. Two years and 660 million pounds of concrete later, the new Big I stood as a model of civil engineering and urban planning, a project that came in on time and budget.
A bird’s-eye view of Albuquerque reveals a city that is quintessentially Sunbelt. It sprawls rather than rises, its confines pushing against the desert at three of its edges, halted at its fourth by a 10,000-foot mountain. Its growth is less a battle between Mother Nature and human will than a carefully choreographed duet—there is no Albuquerque without its wild places or its concrete and steel. Above looms a sky so vast that it dwarfs even the tallest of buildings. Below courses a bosque-lined river, whose banks founding families still farm, managing the life-giving water through an age-old system of communal irrigation. Two interstates, arteries transporting the lifeblood of the state, also snake their way through the city, meeting at a juncture famous enough to have earned it a nickname, “the Big I.” The largest city in New Mexico, Albuquerque boasts a history both ancient and Atomic Age, balancing cultural preservation with progressive revitalization. Industry, commerce, art, and culture thrive, from the shops of historic Old Town to the high-rises of downtown, the boutique businesses that line Central Avenue to the entrepreneurial start-ups of midtown. Here, the photos of renowned photographer and Albuquerque resident Robert Reck present a city that embodies the spirit of the modern American West—respectful of the past, mindful of the present, and ever-optimistic about the future.
The building that now houses Hotel Parq Central has a storied history, proving that when it comes to neighborhood revitalization, everything old can be new again. Located on Central Avenue in the city’s East Downtown, or EDo, neighborhood, the stately Italianate structure was built in 1926. It served as a hospital for the workers of Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, many of whom also built the homes that dot the surrounding residential neighborhoods, known collectively as the Huning Highland Historic District.
From the Spring/Summer 2014 issue
