Pebble-dash stucco covers the AT&SF Freight Office, built in Downtown Albuquerque in 1946 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. You can sense the intent behind its stripped-down Mission style: two stories above a basement, a concrete frame filled with structural clay tile, and an exterior finished in pebble-dash stucco that was meant to harmonize with the nearby railroad buildings — the depot and the Alvarado Hotel — even though those neighbors are no longer standing. This modest, purposeful brickwork survived when the much larger wood-framed freight warehouse to the south was demolished in the 1980s after the railroad shifted regional freight operations to Belen.
That warehouse once extended 450 feet (140 m) toward the Coal Avenue viaduct, part of the same modernization that produced this office. Recognized for its architecture and history, the Freight Office was listed on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 2012 and the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. Follow the empty ground south, where the 450-foot warehouse once stretched toward the Coal Avenue viaduct before it vanished into the Alvarado Transportation Center's quiet grounds.