New Mexico New Deal Sites June 2019 - Photo #26 - Albuquerque: Barelas Community Center

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Albuquerque NM 18 June 2018: The Barelas Community Center, 801 Barelas Road SW. Built in 1941-42 in Pueblo Revival style, for the National Youth Administration, by youth receiving on-the-job training, 1940-42. Dedicated June 13, 1942[1]. Today the Center has a gymnasium, weight room, ceramics room and computer lab. Its center for youth also offers a summer camp with music, arts, history, computer, exercise classes, and more[2]. It houses murals of the Zuni Deer Dance in its Indian Room, but they date from the 1950s or 60s[3]. It opened with NYA-built furniture and fixtues[1] but we weren't able to go inside to see what's there now.
References
  1. Barelas Community Center is Model of Beauty, Utility, Albuquerque Journal, 19 December 1940, p.5: "Viga-ed, Conquistadores Style Building Erected by NYA... The National Youth Administration is in charge. The City of Albuquerque furnished the site. The League of United Latin American Citizens has taken the lead in raising the necessary funds, assisted by Circulo Cultural Mexicano, Alianza Hispano Americana, and Otero-García Post of the Legion. NYA youth employees are doing the construction." That's a short quote from a much longer article.
  2. Barelas Community Center, City of Albuquerque
  3. Jeanne O. Snodgrass, American Indian Painters - A Biographical Directory New York Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation 1968: "Kyash Petrach; Hofyee; Hotyee, also known as Bear, J.; Bear, J. Michael; Bear, James; Bear Claw; Byrnes, James; Jobie Bear; Standing Bear; Sunrise. Born: 1938, N.M. His father was Sioux and his mother Acoma-Laguna. Education : Graduated from Albuquerque, ca. 1956. Career: Hospital orderly. Commissions: Murals: Barelos Community Center, with Charles Vicenti and Dixon Shebola." These people were all babies during the New Deal; Shebola was born in 1937 and Vicenti attended school in the 1950s.
  4. Barelas Community Center at filmabq.com, slide show that includes the murals.
  5. National Youth Administration (NYA) (1935), Living New Neal website, accessed 10 July 2019.