You are here
Joseph J. Baca Plazuela
The Joseph J. Baca Plazuela is an element in the economic redevelopment of Barelas as a center of Hispanic culture. The community park was implemented as part of the Barelas Sector Development Plan, first written in 1973 and updated in 1993 and then again in 2008 and 2014. This plan promoted local, family-owned businesses, instituted the Barelas Community Development Corporation to help provide affordable housing, guided efforts to renovate the neighborhood’s streets and public spaces, and coincided with the decision in 1993 to erect a National Hispanic Cultural Center in Barelas.
The small, triangular plaza sits just south of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce building and provides an open space for community gatherings and performances at the intersection of Barelas’s main commercial and residential thoroughfares, one block north of the National Hispanic Cultural Center. A tall obelisk decorated with multicolored ceramic tile marks the corner and is connected thematically with tilework designed by students on the adjacent pergola and bus stop, which depict scenes from Barelas’s past as an agricultural, railroad, and automobile-oriented community.
References
Barelas Sector Development Plan, 2008. Accessed January 19, 2016. https://www.cabq.gov.
Writing Credits
If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.
SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.