UNM provides 40 years of aid to historic district

The historic community of Martineztown, founded in 1823, was threatened by urbanization in the late 1960s.

The area, also know as South Martineztown, is east of downtown Albuquerque and north of Grand Avenue. The UNM Architecture Department has aided the small Hispanic district for 40 years.

The University Grand Rounds presented a Learning From Martineztown discussion on Wednesday in George Pearl Hall to discuss academics and community work in Albuquerque.

Richard Nordhaus, architecture professor emeritus, worked in the University Design and Planning Assistance Center for 40 years, until his retirement from the University. DPAC provides services to low-income communities that can’t afford to hire professional planners or architects to ensure neighborhoods are up-to-date.
“We are one of the very few community design centers that have operated continuously since the movement started in the 1970s,” Nordhaus said. “We have had 1,500 students come through the program and have done 1,200 projects all over the state of New Mexico.”

DPAC is primarily staffed by undergraduate and graduate architecture students, Nordhaus said.

Frank Martinez, Martineztown spokesman, said DPAC has allowed community members there to get access to resources they wouldn’t otherwise have.

“It is exhilarating and heart warming that the University has made itself available,” Martinez said. “They have also made a commitment to allow them to have access to the resources here and to the talent of the students and the faculty to bring to bear on the everyday problems that we face that have a historical context, have been long-standing and that bore fruit in a very successful way.”

When Martinez was growing up in the community, houses owned by his family and their neighbors were nearly condemned, he said.

Martinez said saving Martineztown wasn’t about conserving the historical context of the community where he grew up, but maintaining a place to live, he said.

“It was keeping your home, keeping your property,” Martinez said. “We had to preserve our shelter. Our only investment was our land and that was the priority. But upon reflection, one of the things abruptly clear to the community was how do we re-inject people of the community to have a sense of place.”