I hit up two locations today, but don't see any real reason to obscure their location. The first location (in this post) is slated for demolition in New Mexico State University's "Master Plan". I figured I should make a trip over to the university and check it out before it's gone.

Built in 1966 NMSU's Cole Village was used as "family style" campus residences for married students. The 198, very tiny, apartments were in-use up until about 2015. Since there just aren't many married students needing campus housing anymore they'll soon be torn down.



Driving around the area it's pretty obvious this entire place is abandoned. Everything is overgrown and it really feels like you've driven back into the 1960's when the apartments were built.





Some of the apartments are open, mostly because they had doors with inset windows which have since been broken.



When I say these are small apartments I mean.. I would be surprised if each 3 bedroom two story apartment is even 800 square feet. Here we see an example of one of the massive kitchens. Just enough room for the stove, fridge and washer / dryer.



There were even fun activities for the kiddos! Here's one of several playgrounds in the housing area... if you can call it a playground... looks more like skinned knees just waiting to happen or a hiding place for the numerous snakes slithering around.



That's about it for this stop of the day.. not too much to be seen really, but still interesting taking a step back into cold war "family" student housing.

Oh.. to the campus security officer that was patrolling the area.. thanks for cruising right by my parked car like it wasn't even there and not turning today into a big deal. I have to imagine you deal with a constant homeless squatter problem.

NMPatriot (Ric)

Very cool! Any idea why they didn't just rent the houses out to non-married students if there weren't enough families attending? You'd think that it would be easy to find some students willing to rent a cheap house together. Every college student I've ever known has 3-5 roommates after all.

Thanks for sharing.
Its cool to see an entire street of abandoned houses mostly intact.

Posted by Aran Very cool! Any idea why they didn't just rent the houses out to non-married students if there weren't enough families attending? You'd think that it would be easy to find some students willing to rent a cheap house together. Every college student I've ever known has 3-5 roommates after all.

I honestly don't know. It often seems like NMSU makes some very strange management decisions or maybe that's all universities these days. Cole Village is actually #2 on the list of university-owned properties slated for demolition. The first is their greek complex because they've completely done away with the greek fraternity / sorority system.

Cole Village is definitely very 1960's and outdated, but that could be changed and it isn't like the housing is completely unneeded because it was in use until about eight years ago.

Only reason I can come up with is maybe they have another planned used for the real estate that they consider more important than the housing it would provide. It's also right next to the interstate so not exactly a prime location for housing.

Either way, for right now it's kind of a creepy abandoned neighborhood where you can drive around multiple blocks and never see a soul.