Buddy Holly Center

The City of Lubbock commissioned the Buddy Holly Center and gallery space for the Contemporary Arts Museum and provided the South Plains Depot, a 1928 Spanish Revival train station, to house a portion of the project. The program included the renovation of the historic depot for the museum and an addition of a new gallery wing to house the City’s Buddy Holly memorabilia collection. The design for the addition complements the existing structure without resorting to mimicry; Buddy Holly’s Stratocaster inspires the new ornamentation surrounding the gallery and alludes to the paired ornamentation of the original depot. At the entry, a new wooden platform with a butterfly canopy is reminiscent of the original freight platform canopy. The work was completed in full compliance with the Secretary of Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation within a restricted budget of about 100 dollars per square foot excluding museum lighting.