When the rehabilitation process began for the Bataan Memorial Building room that once housed New Mexico’s Senate chambers, architects and state workers searched for historic photographs of the space to serve as a guide.

To their surprise, nothing turned up.

"We weren't able to locate any historic photographs of the interior of the chambers, which is really kind of unusual," said Karla McWilliams, the Historic Preservation Division's deputy director. "You would think, with the legislative space that was, that there would be some sort of photography.”

This lack of visual record came to shape the $2.4 million project, designed to at once preserve the history of the so-called "Red Room" and to update it for future meeting and event use. It's a rehabilitation project rather than a restoratio

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