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ED SADOWSKI
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Downtown
Denver
ARCHITECTURE
Daniels & Fisher Tower
Denver Art Museum
Denver City & County Bldg.
Denver Hose Company No. 1 firehouse
Denver Millennium Bridge
Denver Public Library
Denver Skatepark
Ellie Caulkins Opera House
History Colorado Center
Jacobs Bldg.
Sugar Bldg.
Tabor Grand Opera House
Windsor Hotel
Daniels & Fisher Tower ////////////////////////////////////////
16th and Arapahoe St.
When completed in 1911, at 330 feet (375 feet with flagpole) and 21 stories, the D&F Tower was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River, up to 1914, one of the three tallest in the entire United States.
It was Denver’s tallest building for almost half a century, until 1953, its most iconic building, the definitive symbol of the city, visible for miles and still is one of Denver’s most distinctive landmarks. Sometimes it is called Denver's first skyscraper, although that honor also is given to the 1892 Equitable Building.
The building was modeled after The Campanile (St. Mark's Bell Tower) at the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, and was part of the five-story Daniels & Fisher department store. The 20th-floor balcony offers a 360-degree view that stretches for miles. Its 16-foot high clocks face on all four sides, and the 2½-ton bell on the top two floors was touted as the largest west of the Mississippi. For five decades the department store boasted the world’s tallest doorman at 7’5”.
Once the elegant “Denver’s best place to shop,” the store was demolished in 1971 as part of the Skyline Urban Renewal Project, but the tower was saved by preservationists. The tower was converted to lofts and offices in 1981.The top five floors can be rented for private events. Group tours can be arranged.
Denver Art Museum /////////////////////////////////////////////
W. 14th Ave. and Bannock St.
According to Time magazine, the Denver Art Museum belongs on the American Institute of Architect’s top 150 works of architecture of all time.
Founded in 1893, the Denver Art Museum is among the premiere art museums of the world. The DAM has the largest and most comprehensive collection of world art between Kansas City and the West Coast, with over 60,000 works.
It was the first United States art museum to begin collecting Native American work. Its collection of American Indian art is one of the largest in the world.
Its pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art collections are considered to be one of the most significant in North America. Internationally, there is no other museum where one can see examples of the major stylistic movements from all the geographic areas and cultures of Latin America.
The Museum’s Berger Collection is one of the largest private individual collections of British art in the world, claiming a breadth unrivaled in the United States, with more than 150 pieces by British artists that covers a period of six centuries.
With a gift from Frederic C. Hamilton, the DAM impressionist art collection is among the most significant in the world. The DAM’s innovative and pioneering education programs have been models for other museums.
The museum’s North Building, the unique “fortress” structure, clad in more than a million triangular tiles of reflective gray glass, was built in 1971 and is the only American building design by Italian architect Gio Ponti.
The museum’s one-of-a-kind titanium-clad Frederic C. Hamilton Building, opened in 2006, is the first American creation by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind. The building was named one of the Five New Wonders of the World by Condé Nast Traveler magazine.
Denver City & County Bldg. ////////////////////////
W. 14th and Bannock Street
A building graced with superlatives, the Denver City and County Building (courthouse and city hall) has the world’s largest doors in an office or residential building: installed in 1932 when the City and County Building was finished, the doors at the front main entrance are 26 feet high, 13 feet wide, and made of cast bronze weighing 31½ tons.
The massive Neoclassical Revival civic structure occupies an entire city block, in a modified Roman-style design. The curved front is colonnaded with Doric columns that rival the largest ever erected in Greece or Rome. The lavish interior finishes include Colorado marble. In the main lobby, the 19-foot-columns are the tallest travertine columns in the world. (Travertine is a compact form of calcium carbonate, a naturally-formed substance deposited from solutions in ground or surface waters, used as a facing material in construction.)
Latter Perry Mason TV episodes were filmed here. At one time this building laid claim to the world’s largest display of Christmas lights. Displaying Christmas lights outdoors on a grand scale was pioneered in 1919 in the adjacent Denver Civic Center and expanded to the City and County Building. By the late 1920s Denver was called the “Christmas Capital of the World.” In 1945 NBC broadcast a tribute to Denver’s creation of the beautiful holiday tradition of Christmas lights.
Denver Hose Company No. 1 firehouse
20th & Chestnut (NW corner, 1963 Chestnut)
Superlative: Oldest standing firehouse in a major city west of the Mississippi.
Located in the Central Platte Valley Commons district, this two-story, double-arched red brick firehouse, built in 1881, was marked for demolition more than once. Miraculously, it has survived, finally saved by receiving Denver Landmark Preservation status. The building underwent stabilization and restoration, with its beautiful front brickwork preserved. It will open as a restaurant in 2019, part of the 12-story Hilton Garden Inn hotel.
The firehouse was initially operated by volunteers, serving The Bottoms, an industrial area in the Central Platte Valley, consisting of rail yards, warehouses, grain mills and silos. It was taken over by the Denver Fire Department in 1884, until abandoned in 1893. Later the building was a print shop and welding shop, until vacated in the 1980s, then became used for storage in the mid-2000s.
The Denver Millennium Bridge ////////////////////////////
16th Street at Confluence Park
Connecting the 16th Street Mall with Commons Park in the Central Platte Valley District of the Union Station neighborhood, this is the world’s first cable-stayed bridge using post-tensioned structural construction.
This uniquely-built footbridge spans 130 feet without a steep increase in elevation, crossing railroad tracks and the regional light rail system, climbing no higher than 25 feet above street level, thereby minimizing the height pedestrians must climb. Its striking tilted white tapered steel structure, resembling a ship’s mast, rises 200 feet high, connected to the bridge deck and foundation anchors by steel cables. Glass-enclosed elevator towers on both ends of the footbridge accommodate pedestrians without having to climb the stairs leading up to either end of the bridge from street level.
The $9 million bridge, completed in 2002, is the first of a distinctive trio of closely-placed pedestrian bridges between downtown Denver and the Highland neighborhood. To meet the structural challenge of spanning 130 feet (40m) without a steep increase in elevation, the deck’s structure was made as thin as possible while remaining stable. This suspension bridge uses a steel frame deriving its stiffness from tension by using a single mast that is tilted toward one end of the bridge.
Cables supporting the bridge deck are welded to both sides of the mast, but cable to foundation anchors attach to the mast only from the side of the bridge toward which the mast is tilted. Supportive tension is created by using the mast as a lever to pull the deck up into a shallow arc, keeping the opposite end of the bridge secured by two steel rods. With the mast raised, concrete was poured onto the metal deck frame, pushing the deck into place and applying tension to the cables. The post-tensioned structural construction allows for a substantially thinner 6-inch-thick reinforced concrete slab-on-metal deck. The deck structure is supported by secondary I-Beams, and has an average width of 80 feet (24m).
The Denver Public Library ///////////////////////////
W. 13th Ave. & Broadway
The Denver Public Library was established in 1889 in a wing of Denver High School under the direction of renowned librarian and John Cotton Dana. Today it is the largest library system between Chicago and Los Angeles, with 23 branch libraries and a collection of over two million items. A pioneer and innovator in the library world, DPL has several times been rated the nation’s no. one public library. The DPL has been credited with various achievements: the world’s first open shelf system; the first children’s library; the first picture collection; the first library to offer downloadable videos; the largest public library collection of Western history; the largest conservation collection; in the top ten of genealogy collections; one of first telephone reference services. The Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library in Five Points is one of the nation’s premier black history research centers, the only one of its kind west of the Mississippi.
When the present Central library expansion was completed in 1995, it was only among seven public libraries in the country to have display space and a formal exhibit program. Architecturally, the odd-looking postmodern tower-and-drum exterior of the main building has been called among the most unusual among libraries, drawing reviews ranging from “ugly” to “the most spectacular building between the Mississippi and the Pacific.”
The world’s only architectural triple crown opening was in 1995 when Denver launched new ballpark (Coors Field), a new central library (Denver Public Library), a major airport (Denver International Airport), and within five weeks of each other, with a new downtown amusement park (Elitch’s) opening two months later.
The building is the second-largest man-made stone structure in the nation, with 135,556 square feet of limestone, granite and cast stone, second in size only to the Federal Triangle in Washington. Co-designer Michael Graves remarked, “I’ve never seen this degree of craftsmanship in stonework and millwork in a public building. The work in my home isn’t as good.” About the interior, one architect stated, “You will find things in this building that you will not find in other buildings.” The Library has been ranked in the top five of North American libraries as a tourist attraction.
Denver Skatepark //////////////////////////////////////////////////
20th and Little Raven Street
You wouldn't normally think that skateboarding and architecture go together, but skatepark design is a relatively new area of architecture.
Skateboarders approached the City and County of Denver with an idea to fill a need. The result: a million-dollar facility, finished in 2003, at that time the largest outdoor free public skatepark in North America. Designed with consultation of skateboarders, the skatepark became rated no. 1 in the US and no. 3 in the world.
The 60,000 sq. feet of concrete terrain at the north end of Confluence Park challenges boarders, bladers and bikers of all skill levels as well as future competitors training for stardom. The south side is the street course area, with bowls on the north side, and to the east huge banked hips surrounded by ledges and rails. A promenade matches the sandstone walls, trees and site furniture found at Commons Park along Little Raven Street, extending from 19th to 20th Street in front of the Skatepark.
Ellie Caulkins Opera House /////////////////////////////////
“The Ellie,” home to Opera Colorado and a venue for the Colorado Ballet, is the most acoustically-advanced opera house in the world.
It opened in 2005 inside the space of the former historic Denver Municipal Auditorium, in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. The Ellie was designed in the classic lyric style, Inspired by many of the world’s greatest opera houses, with four levels: balcony, loge, mezzanine and orchestra. Its first-ever innovation of a moveable wall behind the orchestra and be the stage adjusts and optimizes the sounds of the orchestra.
The Ellie is one of only three opera houses in the United States, one of nine world-wide, with seatback titling at every seat in the house, with a seating capacity 2200-plus. The Ellie is graced with notable public art, including a Dale Chihuly artwork, a magnificent chandelier that is a one-of-a-kind glass sculpture.
The opera house is named after Eleanor Caulkins, a key figure in the founding of Opera Colorado in 1983, and whose family has been a major donor to the facility’s cost.
History Colorado Center /////////////////////////////////////////
12th and Broadway
The History Colorado Center has been called "the first great history museum of the 21st century" by the Smithsonian Institution. The $110 million dollar three-story structure, designed by Denver’s Tryba Architects, has been described as an “architectural triumph” and “an architectural jewel in Denver’s crown.”
The state’s largest history museum opened in 2012 in the Golden Triangle museum district, replacing the flagship museum of the Colorado Historical Society that sat two blocks away, which sadly drew a disappointing number of visitors. The institution is the latest incarnation of a series of museums created by the State Historical Society of Colorado (now renamed History Colorado), founded in 1879.
Thoroughly green, the cutting-edge design boasts LEED Gold Certification, utilizing a variety of recycled and Colorado materials, including beetle-kill pine, Colorado sandstone, Douglas fir woodworking and cabinetry made of strand-woven aspen.
The new museum is an ultra-high-tech interactive, family-friendly museum, going beyond a traditional museum experience. Enter the lobby to the terrazzo floor of an immense central atrium devoted to the Colorado artist Steve Weitzman’s 40-by-60-foot map portraying the state’s terrain as seen from 400 miles up in space. Reaching two stories above the map is a “dynamic media wall,” with 132 interlocking LCD screens showing a 10,000-year video timeline of Colorado history that unfolds over 20 minutes.
The building houses core and traveling exhibitions and public programs, with extensive historical and research collections, including more than 200,000 artifacts and 750,000 photographs. The Museum is a time machine, aided by multimedia presentations, taking you back to such times as the days of gold and silver mining, the Wild West, Puebloan natives, the Spanish American War, the 10th Mountain Division of World War II. Milk a life-size replica of a cow, drive a Model T Ford on the plains, or try a virtual ski jump, and step into a classroom in the late 1800s. View unusual bits of Colorado’s past such as the “Tomato Wars” and the Leadville Ice Palace.
The Museum houses the state’s Office of History and Archaeology and Historic Preservation, the State Historical Fund, the Stephen H. Hart Research Library and other History Colorado functions. As a Smithsonian Affiliate, the Museum has access to Smithsonian collections and other programs and resources.
Ideal Building ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
17th and Champa Streets
Superlatives: the first reinforced concrete multi-story building west of the Mississippi.
This eight-story building was built in 1907 by Charles Boettcher's (1852-1948) Ideal Cement Company to promote the use of concrete and demonstrate the superiority of concrete construction. Steel buildings, evidenced by many tragic examples, were susceptible to destruction by fire, while concrete structures were not. After construction of the Ideal building was completed, Boettcher had the building set on fire in front of a building inspector to show that it was fireproof. Another advantage of concrete construction was the lower cost and greater speed which locally-produced concrete made possible. The building was home to banks, including the Denver National Bank.
Like the other buildings on the four corners of 17th and Champa, the Ideal Building was built of Colorado Yule marble, red sandstone and travertine. A travertine facade features decorative carvings, and the frieze work features carvings ranging from Rocky Mountain themes to American Indian motifs, stylized agriculture and epic animals. Additional touches to the building were added in the 1920s and it was restored to its original condition in the 1990s, with conversion to apartment lofts.
Jacobs Bldg. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////
707 17th Street
The 707 17th Street Jacobs Building, completed in 1981, was the tallest skyscraper of its kind in the US, and perhaps the Western Hemisphere: a top-heavy (“setfront”) office/hotel tower—a very rare design where the upper part of the tower (starting at the 21st floor) is wider than the lower part, base.
In 2017 this reign ended when a top-heavy tower, Flatiron Tower, was built in New York City with a height of 64 stories, 777 feet.
Formerly known as the MCI Building and Arco Tower, the lowest 20 floors of the Jacobs Building contain the Denver Marriott City Center hotel, containing 613 guest rooms and suites; the upper 22 floors are office space, for a total of 42 floors and 522 feet (159 m) in height. The building's facade is composed of black glass, an example of international-style "black box" architecture. The City Center Hotel has been ranked among the nation’s top 100 meeting hotels.
The Sugar Bldg. //////////////////////////////////////////////
16th & Wazee
The Sugar Building has possibly the oldest operating Otis Elevators west of the Mississippi.
These elevators (with brass and iron cages and gates) have been in service since 1906, when the building was built for the Great Western Sugar Company, once the largest producer of sugar beets in the country.
The building’s unusual buff-colored brick set it apart from most of the surrounding red-brick buildings. the building has windows arranged between vertical piers, and is decorated with terra-cotta geometric shapes and stylized foliage forms. In 1912 two stories were added to the building and a warehouse building was added to the west of it. In 1999 the building exterior was restored and its office space was modernized.
Ghost aficionados will be interested to know that the building is known for reported sightings of hovering orbs of light that move through the second-story halls.
Tabor Grand Opera House ////////////////////////////////
nw corner of 16th and Curtis
GONE INTO HISTORY
The Tabor Grand Opera House was said to be the most opulent building, the finest theatre between Chicago and San Francisco when it was built in 1881 by Horace Tabor for the then phenomenal sum of $850,000.
Tabor, the celebrated silver king who had amassed a fortune in Colorado’s mines (the most famous known as the Matchless), built an opera house in Leadville, then in Denver, bringing world-class culture to the new Queen City of the Plains. Tabor dabbled in politics and had many business ventures, and at his height was purportedly the fifth richest man in the country.
He scandalously married for the second time, to a much younger “Baby Doe,” their storied life together becoming the subject of an opera, movie, play and novel. The collapse of silver in the Panic of 1893 as well as risky investments wiped out Tabor’s fortune.
In 1921 the Opera House was extensively remodeled, becoming a movie palace. At this time the largest steel girder ever installed in a public building, was put into place to hold up the weight of most of the balcony. The theatre attracted the biggest names in entertainment as well as plays. Increasingly the theatre’s operation was not sustainable, and the building was torn down in 1964 during the urban renewal wave. The site is now occupied by the Denver branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Union Station ////////////////////////////////////////////////////
17th & Wynkoop, Lower Downtown
Union Station is near the top on such lists as America’s most "beautiful and awe-inspiring train stations," and among "the world’s best train stations."
When first built it was possibly the largest train depot west of the Mississippi and also was the largest, most massive building in the West. Its Beaux Arts façade was completed in 1914, after a fire in 1894 destroyed the original building. The Denver Union Depot, predecessor of Union Station, opened in 1881 on what had been a duck pond on the outskirts of the city. “Union” meant the unification of railways and multiple train depots in Denver. At its peak, up to 100 trains ran through the station.
Union Station boasted the "most costly soda fountain in the world." A vintage 1918 postcard caption reads: “The Denver Union Station ten thousand dollar onyx soda fountain is the finest and most costly fountain in the world. Built expressly for the Union News Company by the Liquid Carbonic Company. Union News Company service and quality are justly appreciated everywhere by the traveling public.”
After a $1 billion investment, a remade Union Station opened in 2014, part of a model regional transit center, unifying buses and light rail to all points in the metropolis. The station has eight Amtrak and three light rail tracks. Underground there is a 22-gate bus concourse lit by skylights. The station’s most striking features are its distinctive train shed canopy, its exposed Great Hall (with 11 steel archeus), with a boutique hotel, restaurants, shops, bars, and over 600 works of art on display throughout.
Uniquely at this station, a traveler from the Denver International Airport or its hotel can stop at Union Station, board the Ski Train to Winter Park--the only place in the world one can go from airport or hotel by train directly to the ski slopes without additionally having to take a motor vehicle such as a bus or car or taxi.
Windsor Hotel /////////////////////////////////////////////////////
nw corner 18th & Larimer
GONE INTO HISTORY
“The largest and most complete hotel between Chicago and San Francisco” was how the Windsor Hotel was touted when it opened in 1880.
The five-story Windsor was faced with lava stone with additions of sandstone and ironwork and modeled after England’s Windsor Castle and the Windsor Hotel in Montreal. The hotel was financed by an English syndicate, and flew the Stars and Stripes as well as the Union Jack and Windsor castle flags from its turrets.
Uncommon luxuries included hot and cold water and a spa with tile and marble, with Turkish, Russian and Roman baths fed by artesian wells. The hotel had its own farm with imported cows, and even its own hunters, who brought in wild game. The wine cellar was the best, stocked by bartender Harry Tammen, co-founder of The Denver Post. The hotel introduced the country’s first floating grand ballroom, made of white ash with black walnut, and suspended at each end by cables.
Guests of the Windsor included three presidents, Buffalo Bill Cody, Calamity Jane, Bat Masterson and Jack Kerouac. Silver king Horace Tabor housed his mistress Baby Doe there, then after losing his fortune and losing his mansion, he and wife Baby Doe lived there, where Tabor died.
Decades later the hotel became run-down and by the 1930s, the Windsor was labeled “the only flophouse in the world with a marble fireplace in every room.” Despite a restoration in the 1940s, the hotel eventually became run-down again. More restoration plans fell through and Denver’s first luxury hotel was demolished in 1960 to become a parking lot.
Zeckendorf Plaza
GONE INTO HISTORY
16th & Court Place
Superlatives: A renowned architectural example of a hyperbolic paraboloid roof, marking "an internationally-recognized marvel of corporate Modernism and a seminal American interpretation of the International Style."
You would have to comb the earth far and wide to find a hyperbolic paraboloid roof, but here was one, a magnificent one, on 16th Street. It was an iconic visual mark left by famed architect IM Pei that transformed Courthouse Square to Zeckendorf Plaza, Denver's answer to Rockefeller Plaza, complete with a skating rink.
The Plaza and the roof were the front part of a new May D&F Department Store in 1958. The roof was expansive and sharply angled, nearly touching the ground before diagonally soaring to a peak three stories high, topping the glass-walled entrance to the department store. It was an award-winning design described by Architecture Magazine as "an internationally-recognized marvel of corporate Modernism and a seminal American interpretation of the International Style."
Across Court Place, was the other part of the project, Denver's first high-rise hotel complex, the slab-shaped 22-story Hilton, casting its behemoth shadow over the airy Plaza. Downtown's out-migration of department stores caught up with the May D&F, and the large, proud department store was no more. The Hilton became Adam's Mark Hotel, which expanded into the main May D&F space. Then expansion plans eyed the destruction of the paraboloid. A preservation effort to grant landmark status to Zeckendorf Plaza failed, and the Plaza was demolished. In its place the hotel built what has been described as "a clunky black box" of a structure, with its interior a faux opulence gone out of style decades earlier. The 1200-plus room Adam's Mark became the Rocky Mountain West's largest hotel, and in 2008 was sold to Sheraton.
THIS PAGE ///////////////////////////////////////////////
Daniels & Fisher Tower
Denver Art Museum
Denver City and County Building
Denver Hose Company No. 1 firehouse
Denver Millennium Bridge
Denver Public Library
Denver Skatepark
Ellie Caulkins Opera House
History Colorado Center
Ideal Bldg.
Jacobs Bldg.
Sugar Bldg.
Tabor Grand Opera House
Windsor Hotel
PREVIOUS PAGE ////////////////////////////////////////////////
19th St. Bridge
1999 Broadway Bldg./Holy Ghost Church
Art Hotel
Barney L. Ford Bldg.
Boettcher Concert Hall
Brown Palace Hotel
Buell Theatre
Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception
Clyfford Still Museum
Colfax-Larimer Viaduct
Colorado State Capitol Building
Coors Field
