109 East Palace Avenue

By Manasi

Ashutosh at Nuclear Dreams visits, and gives us a peek into what was once the front office for the Manhattan project.

"The place was so nondescript that in 1943 and 1944, many young men missed it and walked straight past by. These were young men from diverse backgrounds. Many had been picked right out of universities for their particular talents. They were from every part of the country, from Princeton to Berkeley, from Chicago to New York. They were men and women of different dispositions, religious sentiments or the lack thereof, married or single, with an average age of 25 years. Many of them spoke English with a heavy accent. But all of them had one thing in common; all had been asked to report to 109 East Palace Avenue in downtown Santa Fe, where I was now standing. None of them knew what would happen next. All they had been asked to do was to take a train to Lamy and report to 109 East Palace. There, they would be given further instructions by Dorothy McKibben. She would send them to a place that no one had ever heard of."