school house rocks

for many, many years, the old albuquerque high school sat sadly vacant taking up a huge piece of prime real estate in downtown albuquerque. it was undecided what was going to happen to the old school and demolition was threatened many times. however, fate had planned something so much more for this beautiful landmark and five years ago, it opened up as lofts and retail space.


i had never been in the old building in all of the years i lived in albuquerque but i had a soft spot for it each time i drove by since my mother had attended the school briefly before they closed it. i always loved the building because it represented a time in albuquerque, architecturally speaking, that you did not see much any more. there are very few red brick buildings left in the city and an over abundance of brown stucco.


i was so excited last week when i finally got a look into the interiors of the "new" albuquerque high and i could not believe what an amazing job they did in restoring it, complete with halls just as if you were going back in time to high school. i was told that with each loft, the tenants get their own allotment of lockers to use for storage.


this particular loft that my very stylish friend lives in is a studio space. i love the way that she had it decorated and she was kind enough to let me photograph it to feature it on my blog.

check out the giant chalkboard in the living room. this would be cool to use like the character in 500 days of summer did when he did architectural drawings all over his walls in his apartment.


and instead of using the upper loft space for her sleeping area, she left her bed downstairs and then turned the upper space into a cool lounge area with bean bags.

what do you think? could you go back to high school if it was this cool?