The Simms Building in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, was the city's first modern, International Style skyscraper. It was built in 1954, making it a contemporary of the similar Lever House in New York City. The building is located at 400 Gold Avenue SW, which was originally the location of the old sandstone Commercial Club building. The Simms Building is 55 m (180 ft) with 13 floors, which made it the tallest building in the state until the Bank of the West Tower was built, nine years later. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
Like the neighboring Gold Building, the Simms Building has windowless brick walls on the east and west sides and glass curtain walls on the other two faces, designed by the firm Flatow, Moore, Bryan, and Fairburn, which is also credited for the Dennis Chavez Federal Building one block to the west.
The Simms Building is used in Breaking Bad as the DEA office of character Agent Hank Schrader. Ironically, there is a historic Federal Building in the same block, the Federal Building and United States Courthouse, built in 1930, located at 421 Gold Avenue SW in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is part of the complex of federal buildings on Gold Avenue that includes the Old Post Office, Dennis Chavez Federal Building, and the Federal Building at 517 Gold Avenue SW.
Famous quotes containing the word building:
“Our civilization is characterized by the word “progress.” Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)