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Forgotten Barelas: Recovered History of a Lost Business District
Monica Bencomo at Fourteenfifteen Opening Reception: Friday May 1, 6-9pm Forgotten Barelas: Recovered History of a Lost Business District is an exhibition inspired by Monica Bencomo’s capstone project completed in Spring 2024 for the Historic Preservation Program at the University of New Mexico’s School of Architecture and Planning, in which she documented the business district that once existed in the Barelas neighborhood adjacent to the former Santa Fe Railway Shops. Long overshadowed by the prominence of the Santa Fe Railway Shops—the largest employer in New Mexico at its peak—this corridor was a vibrant, multicultural network of small businesses, workforce housing, and railroad-related industry that sustained the daily lives of railroad workers and neighborhood families. |
The exhibition brings into focus individual businesses in this area and the story of these businesses will be told using a combination of archival photographs, historic architectural drawings, newspaper articles, Sanborn maps, and city directories paired with contemporary images. Forgotten Barelas invites viewers to reflect on the lasting impacts of industry decline and disinvestment, presenting the corridor as a learning landscape shaped by change over time. The exhibition presents a visual and historical juxtaposition of this corridor adjacent to what is now known as the Rail Yards, revealing what the area was then and what it has become today.
Monica Bencomo is a community development professional and preservationist whose work explores the relationship between place, memory, and neighborhood identity. Guided by a lifelong passion for history, she has spent the past six years working in community development with nonprofit, Homewise in the Barelas neighborhood, developing projects that connect cultural preservation, history, and community revitalization, including the Barelas Historic Walking Tour and the historic B Ruppe Drugstore micro museum. She is also the creator of Ephemera ABQ, a social media platform dedicated to the history of Albuquerque, with a focus on sharing the history of places that no longer exist. These projects inspired her to return to school to complete the Historic Preservation Graduate Certificate program at UNM’s School of Architecture & Planning, of which she completed in Spring of 2024.
Monica Bencomo is a community development professional and preservationist whose work explores the relationship between place, memory, and neighborhood identity. Guided by a lifelong passion for history, she has spent the past six years working in community development with nonprofit, Homewise in the Barelas neighborhood, developing projects that connect cultural preservation, history, and community revitalization, including the Barelas Historic Walking Tour and the historic B Ruppe Drugstore micro museum. She is also the creator of Ephemera ABQ, a social media platform dedicated to the history of Albuquerque, with a focus on sharing the history of places that no longer exist. These projects inspired her to return to school to complete the Historic Preservation Graduate Certificate program at UNM’s School of Architecture & Planning, of which she completed in Spring of 2024.
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