Razing of the Aztec Motel, June 2011

By most accounts, the Aztec was the oldest surviving motel in New Mexico—it was six years older than the El Vado, which the city designated as a landmark site and spared from development a few years back. The hodgepodge of paintings, bottles, tile, pottery and tchockies that positively bloomed off the stucco was painstakingly installed by Phyllis Evans in the '90s. She was a professor at Michigan State University who sometimes lived at the motel and treated it like a retirement project. Video shot by Patrick Shorty.

• Category

  News & Politics