The Dennis Chavez Federal Building is a highrise federal office building and courthouse in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was built in 1965 to house the U.S. District Court as well as offices of various federal agencies including the U.S. Postal Service, Veterans Administration, U.S. Public Health Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. Originally known simply as the U.S. Courthouse and Federal Office Building, the building was renamed in honor of longtime U.S. Senator Dennis Chavez in 1976.
The Dennis Chavez Building was designed by the Albuquerque firm of Flatow, Moore, Bryan, and Fairburn, which had previously been responsible for other local highrises like the Simms Building and Bank of the West Tower. The steel-framed building is faced with polished granite, with New Mexico marble used in the ground floor lobby. It is 197 feet (60 m) in height and has 13 above-ground floors with a basement and underground parking garage. When built, it was the third-tallest building in New Mexico after the Bank of the West Tower and the Gold Building. It is currently the seventh-tallest building in Albuquerque.
The District Court relocated to the newly-built Pete V. Domenici United States Courthouse in 1998, but the U.S. Bankruptcy Court is still housed in the Dennis Chavez Building.
Famous quotes containing the words federal and/or building:
“Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)