Snow Heights in Albuquerque, NM

Snow Heights is a postwar subdivision in Albuquerque's Northeast Heights, laid out on a quarter section east of the Hoffmantown Shopping Center that builder Edward Snow bought in 1953. Snow, a University of New Mexico engineering graduate who had been putting up houses since 1947, followed that first tract with Snow Heights Additions 2 and 3 on land immediately northeast, and his name carried across the whole area. The housing stock is single-family and of a piece with the 1950s building boom that pushed Albuquerque onto the East Mesa. There are no gates and no association dues, and Snow Heights Park sits inside the neighborhood.

The neighborhood belongs to a specific moment. Albuquerque's city limits tripled between 1946 and 1950, and builders answered by hopscotching subdivisions east across the mesa. Dale Bellamah was laying out Princess Jeanne Park in the same stretch of years, so these blocks share a vintage, a scale and a street pattern with several of their neighbors.

Nothing here is governed by a homeowners association. There are no dues, no architectural committee and no private common areas, which leaves yards, fences and street parking to city code and to whatever each block has settled into over seventy years.

Wyoming Boulevard carries the through traffic on this side of the Heights and has its own ramp onto Interstate 40, which puts the freeway a few minutes from most streets in the subdivision.