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2012 Site Listing
19th Street Bridge
American Woodmen Insurance/Humphries Poli Architects
Art Students League of Denver / Sherman School
Assistance League of Denver / Bosworth House
Black American West / Justina Ford House Museum
Bryant/Webster School
Buffalo Bill Museum & Grave / Lookout Mountain
Byers-Evans House Museum
Byron R. White U.S. Courthouse
Campbell House
Capitol Hill Mansion / Keating House
Cass Mansion
Castle Marne Bed & Breakfast Inn
Chamberlin Observatory (DU)
Chappel House / Unity Temple
Cheesman Park Pavilion & Fountains
Church of the Epiphany
City Park Esplanade
City Park Golf Course
City Park Pavilion / Ferril Lake / Electric Fountain
Civic Center Park (Greek Theater, Voorhees Memorial, Broadway Terrace/Esplanade)
Clayton Early Learning Campus
Colorado Heights University
Confluence Park & Plaza
Croke Patterson House
Davis Partnership Architects
Dedisse Park / Evergreen Lake
Denver Children’s Home
Denver City Cable Railway Bldg
Denver City Hall Annex #1
Denver Consistory / Scottish Rite Masonic Temple
Denver Fire House #3
Denver Firefighters Museum / Fire House #1
Denver Public Library Decker Branch
Denver Woman’s Press Club
Dora Moore Elementary School
East High School
Echo Lake & Lodge
Eisenhower Chapel at Lowry
Elitch Gardens Theatre
Ellie Caulkins Opera House / Auditorium Theater
Emerson School
Equitable Building
Evans Memorial Chapel - University of Denver
Fairmount Cemetery: Ivy Chapel & Gateway
Fitzroy Place Mansion
Fort Logan Field Officers’ Quarters
Four Mile Historic Park
German House Turnverein
Governor’s Residence at the Boettcher Mansion
Grant-Humphreys Mansion
Iliff Hall
Inspiration Point Park
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art
Larimer Square - The Granite Building
Margery Reed Mayo Nursery
Masonic Temple
Mayan Theatre
Montclair Civic Building - Molkerie
North High School
Overland Cotton Mill (Hercules Industries)
Oxford Hotel
Paramount Theatre
Pearce/McAllister Cottage / Denver Museum of Miniatures, Dolls & Toys
Platt Park / Fleming House
Riverside Cemetery
Rockmount Ranch Wear
Sloan’s Lake Marina
Smith’s Chapel (Inner City Parish)
South High School
St Andrew’s Episcopal
St. Elizabeth’s Retreat Chapel
St. Patrick’s Mission Church
Tattered Cover Book Store - Colfax Avenue (Bonfils)
Washington Park Boathouse
Wazee Exchange / Roth + Sheppard Architects
West High School
William G. Fisher House / Tryba Architects
Zang Brewmaster’s House / George Schmidt House
Zang Mansion
2011 Site Information Below
16th Street Mall
Urban Adventures: B, C, I
16th St., Broadway to Wewatta
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: I.M. Pei, FAIA
Stretching 16 blocks between Civic Center and Union Stations, the granite blocks composing this pedestrian mall were designed to resemble scales of the Western Diamondback rattlesnake.
Horsedrawn carriages and free RTD mall shuttles (which today run on natural gas) have transported over 300 million riders since completion in 1982. The streetlamp fixtures and planters are architectural elements unique to the mall.
www.DowntownDenver.com
Year Built: 1982
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, food/beverage service
Public Transit: RTD Light Rail, 16th St. Mall Shuttle
American Woodmen Insurance/Humphries Poli Architects
Site Number:
Urban Adventures: D
2100 Downing St.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Gordon D. White, AIA; Humphries Poli Architects
The American Woodmen Insurance Building stands as a quintessential example of the Modern style of architecture in Colorado. This sleek structure was originally the home of the Supreme Camp of the American Woodmen, a fraternal order in the business of providing insurance. The American Woodmen were of noted importance to the surrounding Five Points and City Park West communities from their inception in 1901 until their closure in 1993. The building is two stories clad in terra cotta with steel sash windows and rounded corners. This is currently the home to Humphries Poli Architects, P.C., one of the leading design firms in the region.
www.hparch.com
Year Built: 1950
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Public Transit: RTD Route #7
Anchor Center for Blind Children
Urban Adventures: J
2550 Roslyn Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
www.anchorcenter.org
Year Built: 2007
Architect: Davis Partnership Architects; Maria Cole, AIA
The Julie McAndrews Mork building at the Anchor Center for Blind Children has taught independence to visually-impaired kids since its construction in 2007. It is a must-see because there is no place else in the country like it.
This building was designed to meet the unique learning styles of young children (birth-5) who have vision impairments. Use of lighting, acoustics, textures and other sensory elements make it a beautiful and functional building. It was the recipient of the Colorado Business Committee of the 2008 Arts Best Workspace Award. Tours will be offered throughout the day, both days. The Grand Hallway allows more room for collision-free movement than traditional narrow school hallways, the Sensory Garden uses sculptures and a water feature to provide texture and sound, and a Cane Walk Lane and Braille Trail provide opportunity for cane training or riding a tricycle. On the North side is an imposing wall with carefully placed windows for selective views through.
Photography Allowed: Yes (no photos of children)
Services Provided: Disabled access; public restrooms; free parking
Public Transit: RTD Route 73
Ar7 + NAC Architecture
Urban Adventures: D
1645 Grant St.
SAT 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Hoover Berg Desmond (renovation)
This modern building with flat top and horizontally banded bricks is home to an architectural firm whose projects include a renovation of the famous jagged white Air Force Academy Chapel.
Built in the late forties or early fifties as a two-story office building, the original building was expanded to include the west-side second floor in the late fifties or early sixties.
The architecturally-significant redesign and remodel was done by Hoover Berg Desmond in 1984 as the firm became the first floor tenant in that year. HBD was involved in a complete interior design remodel and Grant Street elevation transformation as the existing building had its two floors entirely remodeled. An entirely new building front on Grant Street was designed and constructed. This exterior re-design was integral to the new design of entrance lobbies and complete building interior remodel.
www.ar7.com
Year Built: Unknown
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: RTD Route #20
Augustana Lutheran Church of Denver
Urban Adventures: E
5000 East Alameda Ave.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 12PM - 4PM
Architect: SLATERPAULL Architects
Augustana Lutheran’s growing congregation purchased this 5.5 acre lot for $55,000 in 1955 to create a new home; the ribbed steel-beamed building was designed by Minnesota architect E.A. Slovik, with church members overseeing landscaping, heating, plumbing and general contracting. NOTE: The public is welcome during orchestral rehearsal on Sunday from 2:30-4:00pm.
The church was opened on Sunday, July 5, 1959, with an education wing added in 1965.
Notable interior details include: communion rail, baptysmal font, and 2,500 pound altar of California black granite, hangings and kneelers made by congregants, stained-glass windows, and pew seating for around 800.
www. AugustanaDenver.org
Year Built: 1959
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Public Transit: RTD #20
Auraria Campus Commons - Tivoli Square
Urban Adventures: B, H
900 Auraria Parkway
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: studioINSITE
The Tivoli is a Denver landmark with history as interesting as its architecture: the first of its 12 buildings was constructed as a brewery.
The Tivoli was named after the world-famous Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Denmark. It changed hands many times before brewing its last beer in 1966. In 1994, the Tivoli newly renovated, opened as one of the premier student unions in the country. Its role as a student union represents the recent history, but there is much more to the Tivoli story.
www.ahec.edu
Year Built: Unknown
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, food/beverage service
Auraria Campus: King Center
Urban Adventures: H, L
855 Lawrence Way
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: AR7, Hoover Desmond Architects & Semple Brown Design
Opened in 2000, this center for musical and theatrical education was designed by AR7 Hoover Desmond Architects with Semple Brown. It contains performance and practice space, classrooms, and shops for creating costumes and scenery.
www.ahec.edu
Year Built: 2000
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Auraria Campus: Library
Urban Adventures: H
1155 10th Street Mall
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: C.F. Murphy & Associates
Designed by Helmut Jahn of C.F. Murphy and Associates, this 1976 building houses the library of Colorado’s largest university campus. It also offers classrooms, a media center, and two courtyards.
www.ahec.edu
Year Built: 1976
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Auraria Campus: Science Building
Urban Adventures: H
1150 12th Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Sink Combs Dethlefs (original); Anderson Mason Dale Architects (renovation)
Originally created by Sink Combs to house the administrative office, specialized laboratories and classrooms of the three Auraria schools’ science programs, this building now wears a 2010 addition and renovation by Anderson Mason Dell.
www.ahec.edu
Year Built: 1976
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Babi Yar Park
Urban Adventures: C
10451 E Yale Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Halprin & Associates
Babi Yar Park is a living memorial to the thousands of Jews, gypsies, Ukrainians and others, murdered from 1941-43 at the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of Kiev.
Currently under construction, visitors will still be able to visit the Entry Memorial, a gateway formed by two irregularly shaped, rough, black granite monoliths, and the People Place, the bowl-shaped amphitheater with a central circular granite platform.
Renewing the message of Babi Yar Park
Babi Yar Park is located in a dynamic area of southeast Denver that has high profile and is undergoing tremendous transition. It is located on the semi-arid high plains within the city limits of Denver at the eastern edge of the suburb of Aurora, Colorado. The site encompasses 27 acres and rises to a point where one has a panoramic view of the Rocky Mountains to the west.
Lawrence Halprin and Saturu Nishita’s original design intent was to leave most of the native plantings of high-plains grasses, yucca, and prickly pear in place. Blue grass is placed only where usage requires. The three memorial elements of the Park are placed at three corners of a path system emulating the Star of David.
Today’s Babi Yar Park Foundation, in tandem with the Mizel Museum, seeks to reflect, encourage and motivate an internationally inspired awakening of consciousness and humanity, inspiring a tolerance and appreciation for life and the recognition of similarities and hopes of all peoples.
Now, through a transformation of the existing living memorial of Babi Yar Park, we seek to create a vision of hope and renewal of humanitarianism and respect engendering change and hope in a worldwide community.
The Babi Yar Park Foundation has partnered with the Mizel Museum to seek to extend its global message of conscience and hope throughout the world. From its founding, the message of Babi Yar Park has been that whenever any one segment of humanity is victimized, humanity, as a whole, suffers. Babi Yar, in Kiev, Ukraine was a place of cruelty and death; Babi Yar park in Denver, Colorado is a place of life and hope.
History of Babi Yar in Kiev and Babi Yar Park in Denver
More than 30 years ago, visionary Denverites came together, as the Babi Yar Park Foundation, to memorialize a tragic and senseless act of terror with a gift of hope and life that would last in perpetuity. Founded in 1971, Denver’s Babi Yar Park is a living memorial to the thousands of Jews, gypsies, Ukrainians and others, murdered from 1941-1943 at the Babi Yar ravine on the outskirts of Kiev. The story of Babi Yar begins on Yom Kippur in 1941, in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. In a murderous rage, conceived of Nazi mind, and abetted through the complicity of Ukrainian officials, vicious dogs, and soldiers bearing bayoneted guns, herded between 100,000 and 200,000 men, women and children to the ravine edge. Ordered to strip and pile their clothes into orderly bundles, they were then methodically machine-gunned and thrown, some still half alive, into that now infamous ravine.
The connection between Babi Yar and Denver begins in 1969 when the late Mayor William H. McNichols, Jr., designated 27 acres of park land at Yale and Havana as Babi Yar Park, at the request of The Committee of Concern for Soviet Jewry, with the purpose of creating “a place and an act that would demonstrate a unified public protest.” This was the beginning of the promise to build “a growing symbol of conscience” that would be a “landmark of national significance.”
The Babi Yar Park was dedicated, in late 1971, by the writer, Elie Weisel, a survivor of Auschwitz, Buna, Buchenwald, and Gleiwitz, who has dedicated his life to ensuring that none of us forgets what happened at this time in history. The Park’s second dedication, in October 1983, marked the transformation from a reserved open space into a park, designed in the San Francisco office of world-famous landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, as a profoundly sacred ground of remembrance, hope and protest against all acts of inhumanity.
www.denvergov.org/parksandrecreation
Year Built: 1982
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, street parking
Buell Theatre
Urban Adventures: E, H, L
1400 Curtis Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Paul E. Westlake, Jr., FAIA
Built on the site of the former Auditorium Arena, the Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre (originally built in 1952) has a glass facade and Colorado sandstone walls inside the performance area. Its seating capacity is 2,884, and it is Denver’s stage venue of choice for high-profile Broadway musicals, dramatic plays, and comedy acts.
www.ArtsComplex.com
Year Built: 1991
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: Light Rail to Theatre District/Convention Center stop
Burns Park
Urban Adventures: C
Alameda & Colorado Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Halprin & Associaties
Burns Park is home to five, large abstract sculptures with a fascinating history. Four of the sculptures in Burns Park date back to 1968 when a group of artists, calling themselves “Art for the Cities, Inc.,” proposed a contemporary sculpture symposium in Burns Park.
Nine nationally-known sculptors—Anthony Magar, Dean Fleming, Peter Forakis, Robert Mangold, Robert Morris, Richard Van Buren, Wilbert Verhelst, Roger Kotoske and Angelo Di Benedetto—created large sculptures for the park with donated plywood. Their intent was for these sculptures to temporarily transform the sloping, grassy park into a massive outdoor gallery. As time passed, these “temporary” sculptures became a site for music and dance performances and neighborhood children to play.
In the past 40 years, five of these sculptures were removed or destroyed and have faded from memory, but four of the original sculptures remain. Sculptures by Roger Kotoske, Wilbert Verhelst and Anthony Magar were repaired and repainted on-site. A sculpture by Angelo DiBenedetto was re-constructed in cast concrete back in 2004—this sculpture has been repainted. A fifth swooping red and gold sculpture, titled Jazz, by Denver artist Barbara Baer was installed in the park in 1999. It was completely removed and repainted off-site, then re-sited a short distance from its original site and new footers installed.
DOCA is also pleased to announce that another sculpture by Anthony Magar, Untitled, has been donated to the City by the late Suzanne W. Joshel. Because the sculpture shares the scale and aesthetic of the other five sculptures in Burns Park, it will be moved to the park in the winter of 2010.
www.denvergov.org/parksandrecreation
Year Built: 1982
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, street parking
Burnsley All Suite Hotel
Urban Adventures: E
1000 Grant Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Gordon Lewis Associates
It’s no mistake that this hotel resembles an apartment building: in 1963, it was designed as one by Gordon Lewis Associates. By 1969, however, the 17-story gray edifice had been reformed as a hotel and jazz club, and was purchased from a group of investors including Ella Fitzgerald and Kirk Douglas.
In 1983, the all-suite hotel was renovated in the European Boutique genre, with more English-style redecorations in 2005. During Doors Open Denver 2011, the hotel will feature a bloody mary bar and live music. All 80 of the hotel’s suites include kitchen, dining area, and private balcony with wrought-iron fixtures. Projecting noticeably above the upper stories of the hotel’s concrete-stilted façade is the two-floor penthouse; it features kitchen with granite countertops and cherry cabinets, bathroom with Jacuzzi, marble floor, and flat-screen TV, and a spiral staircase linking floors 16 and 17. Outside the penthouse, panoramic views are provided by its thousand square feet of deck space.
www.burnsley.com
Year Built: 1963
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Cable Center
Urban Adventures: B, K
2000 Buchtel Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 2PM SUN 10AM - 2PM
Architect: RNL
The Alan Gerry Cable Center Building, first named the Cable Television Center, has been educating the public about the contributions of the cable telecommunications industry since 2001. Its multimedia displays require almost 70 miles of coaxial cable and an outdoor amphitheater is used for film screenings.
HBO’s programming is archived at the Cable Center. The Center is a must-see with stone and glass contemporary design, unique porthole windows designed to illustrate “cable” television and the 3-story Video Tower with 44 LCD monitors. Walk on the top of the world in the Daniels Great Hall: its terrazzo flooring features a “Map of the World” representing cable worldwide.
This 74,500 square foot educational building by RNL Design incorporates 554 tons of stainless steel, 30,000 square feet of granite and Indiana limestone, 15,000 square feet of glass, and 16,000 square feet of copper; the building won the 2004 Masterwork in Masonry award. Its 2.5 acres of land is on lease from DU for the next two centuries. The center features a 32 foot video tower made of 44 flat-screen TVs, indoor and outdoor HD theaters, 68 miles of coax cable, and a terrazo floor world map. Inside the center with ties to cable pioneer Bill Daniels, cable television’s contributions to society are preserved and celebrated. Within this nonprofit educational arm of the cable industry (established at Penn State in 1985) are the Barco Library (the world’s largest collection of cable TV literature, equipment, and memorabilia), the Robert L. Johnson Distance Learning Studio that enables interaction between DU classes and faraway lecturers, and the Hauser collection of oral and video histories of cable icons.
www.CableCenter.org
Year Built: 2001
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Disabled access; paid parking
Public Transit: RTD #21, #24, #7
Colorado Convention Center
Urban Adventures: H, L
700 14th Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Fentress Bradburn Architects
The Colorado Convention Center was designed by Curtis W. Fentress and later expanded by him in 2004 to double its size at a cost of $340 million: now the building contains 2.2 million gross square feet.
The Center contains 584,000 square feet of exhibit space, 100,000 square feet in 63 separate meeting rooms, and 85,000 square feet in the Four Seasons and Korbel Ballrooms, plus the 5000 seat Wells Fargo Theater. In addition to the convention center’s 1000 parking spaces and pedestrian bridge across Champa to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, it straddles atop Stout Street and a stop on the Light Rail central corridor’s D, F, and H lines. The building is best known for its glass facades, canted projecting roofslabs, and surrounding outdoor public art installations.The CCC is owned by the City and County of Denver, but privately run by a venue management firm. Events held within include the Great American Beer Festival, the Colorado State Spelling Bee, the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Expo, and graduation ceremonies for DPS, Metro State, CU Denver, CCD, and Regis, with concerts by Bruce Springsteen, Alicia Keys, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
www.DenverConvention.com
Year Built: 1990
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: Light Rail to Theatre District/Convention Center stop
Commons Park
Urban Adventures: C
15th & Little Raven Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Civitas
Situated near the birthplace of Denver at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte, this 20 acre riparian area is one of the city’s newest and most accessible parks.
Located near the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, Commons Park sits on the site of Denver's birthplace. The site was once an amusement park and a former railroad and industrial yard. The park extends from 15th Street on the south, 19th Street on the north, and Little Raven Street on its east side. It is flanked by the South Platte River, and the park’s west edge emphasizes the river’s natural character with native grasses and wetlands. One of the key components of Mayor Wellington Webb’s South Platte River Legacy, 20-acre Commons Park was constructed beginning in 1998 to 2001. The park contains manicured lawn areas with looped paths running from one end of the park to another--a typical feature of many of Denver's favorite parks--encouraging informal ball play and picnicking.
Several notable landmarks and features sit within the park. The Seeps natural area is at the south end just below 15th St. and Little Raven. The Seeps contain the largest area of wetland and riparian plantings--sedges, rushes and other broad-leaf plants, as well as willows and native Cottonwoods. It is called the Seeps since there is ample moisture to sustain the water-loving plants placed in this area. The riverbank has been excavated to allow the river to flow into the Seeps area and support wetland plantings.
Immediately north of the Seeps, the Sky Garden is the park’s high point, offering panoramic views of the nearby area. Each of the four entries to the garden is defined by granite wedges that represent cardinal compass points. The Sky Garden was designed to orient visitors upwards to look at the clouds and mountains, and to forget for a moment that they are still in the city. The Sky Garden is one of several stone features in the park. Of special interest are faux rock outcropping jetties along the banks of the Platte River that allow the visitor a chance to get closer to the river. The nearby Common Ground rhyolite sculpture also provides a ramp and staircase to additional great views of the Denver downtown area.
In contrast, on its east side, the park features are more urban and make a connection to downtown Denver. The tree lined promenade along Little Raven Street offers numerous seating areas and entries into the park. It is the park’s urban interface and front door, encouraging people in the adjacent residential and commercial areas to visit the park
Commons Park has been one of the City's priority projects to restore and enhance areas along the South Platte River. It is an important part of Riverfront Park which is a combination of parks in the Central Platte Valley.
www.denvergov.org/parksandrecreation
Year Built: 2000
Photography Allowed: No photography or video for commercial purposes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Crate & Barrel
Urban Adventures: G
101 Clayton Lane
SAT 10AM - 7PM SUN 11AM - 5PM
Architect: Jacques Verlinden; NBBJ, Seattle, WA
The vision is to create a warm, friendly environment that is based on a passion for product and presentation. The architect sought to support this vision by creating a unique, but consistent, home store that enhances the shopping experience by complimenting the merchandise and enforcing the brand identity.
The retail building is an anchor for this mixed-use development. Its corner location allows it to act as a beacon for the center while still being integrated with the development. The tilted, angled white metal panel wall makes a bold statement and acts as a strong store brand advertisement. It creates a foil for the trademark black and white presentation of the retailer’s logo and its opacity screens the retail space from southern exposure. These crisp white planes are in juxtaposition to vast expanses of warm stained cedar. Glass is strategically located to break down the building into smaller masses, separate different materials and to showcase merchandise on both levels while still minimizing excessive sun exposure. Overall, the building is intended to be an easily recognized but friendly component of a bigger urban development.
The architect collaborated closely with the client in order to layout the 24,700 square feet of retail space. The interior was designed to help the client organize their vast array of product while maintaining focus and flow for the customer. This was achieved by using the right combination of a few simple design techniques. First, the use of warm, textural materials helps to provide distinction between different categories of product while creating an interesting combination of contemporary and traditional. Secondly, the use of various ceiling heights helps to further define areas of the store while creating some intimate, residential-like scale within the large retail space. Lastly, the use of architectural repetition helps to bring order to the amount of product while creating a sense of direction for the customer circulation. The end result is a site specific retail building that successfully strengthens the client’s brand identity while reflecting their commitment to quality design.
www.CrateandBarrel.com
Year Built: 2004
Photography Allowed: Yes (public areas only)
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: RTD 1st Avenue Route
Daniels Fund
Urban Adventures: G
101 Monroe Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Michael Knorr & Peggy Powers
Done in Modern architectural style, this building features deep eaves and pyramidal skylights. The interior includes a circular veneered dome ceiling above a master staircase and vaulted corridor ceilings enhanced by rich textures of fine wood and granite.
In 1997, Colorado native, golden gloves champion, veteran fighter pilot, one-time L.A. Lakers co-owner, Young Americans Bank founder, and cable television pioneer Bill Daniels created the Daniels Fund to further his philanthropic pursuits. This modern building, built on a site selected by Bill, was completed in 2003 with architecture by Michael Knorr and interior design by Peggy Powers. Its strong horizontal lines are punctuated by vertical ribbon windows; highlights include pyramidal skylights, cherry paneling, displays of Bill Daniels memorabilia, and a sculpture of the man himself in the welcome plaza. Bill was a founder of the United States Football League, president of the American Basketball Association, one-time owner of the L.A. Lakers, and Commander in the U.S. Navy.
The building reflects his attention to detail and quality and is located less than a mile from his home, Cableland, which now serves as the Official Residence of the Mayor of Denver. The small plaza welcoming visitors to the building features a sculpture of Bill Daniels created by Ken Bunn. Tours of the building will be offered throughout the day.
www.DanielsFund.org
Year Built: 2003
Photography Allowed: Yes (public areas only)
Services Provided: Disabled access; public restrooms; free parking
Denver Art Museum - North Building & Hamilton Building
Urban Adventures: B, D, H
100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway
SAT 10AM - 5PM SUN 10AM - 5PM
NOTE: The following areas ONLY are free during Doors Open Denver:
Lower level and first level of the North Building, public spaces on the first level of the Hamilton Building (grand atrium, Museum Shop, welcome center).
Architects: Gio Ponti & James Sudler, AIA; Daniel Libeskind, AIA & Davis Partnership Architects
Founded in 1893, the Denver Art Museum has one of the largest collections of world art between Chicago and the West Coast. The 24-sided North Building is covered in over one million glass tiles.
The DAM nearly doubled in size in October, 2006 with the Hamilton expansion. The angular design and soaring central atrium are architectural highlights. The art museum consists of two boldly modern structures: the 1971 North Building, designed by Italian architect Gio Ponti and Denver’s James Sudler Associates, with its seven stories of crenellated, castle-like facade and reflective glass tiles, and the 2006 Hamilton Building, designed by Daniel Libeskind to reflect the Colorado sunshine and mountains in its angular panels clad in titanium panels.
The North Building can be seen as a forerunner in the movement away from traditional temple-style museum architecture. The building’s two seven-story towers are arranged like a square figure eight, joined by a service core with elevators, lobbies and public facilities.
The Hamilton Building includes galleries for the museum’s permanent collection, three temporary exhibit spaces, Museum Shop, auditorium, art storage and public amenities. The geometric angles reflect the Rocky Mountains and rock crystals.
Photography Allowed: No flash photography or tripods permitted inside the buildings; photography/video for personal use only (not for commercial purposes), photography of art on loan is prohibited.
www.denverartmuseum.org
Year Built: 1971 (North Building); 2006 (Hamilton Building)
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking (meters free on Sunday)
Public Transit: RTD #0, #10 and #15; Light Rail to Broadway Station
Denver Health Medical Center: Rita Bass Trauma & EMS Education Institute
Urban Adventures: M
190 West 6th Avenue
SAT 10AM - 2PM
Architect: Roybal & Associates
This location is the training and research extension of Denver Health, and offers diverse services through efficient design: a 160-person central auditorium connects all classrooms.
This 1999 brick-clad building with steel structure was designed by the Roybal Corporation. Some of the classrooms are dividable to accommodate various audience size, and video production and satellite uplink facilities provide training to remote communities. In addition to education areas, the building also has facilities to host seminars and events.
www.DenverHealth.org
Year Built: 1999
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: RTD #52
Denver Health Medical Center - Webb Building for Primary Care
Urban Adventures: M
301 West 6th Avenue
SAT 10AM - 2PM
Architect: Boulder Associates Architects
Borrowing from architectural styles, textures and colors elsewhere on campus, this clinic’s warm and light elements keep the swooping modern facade of brick, glass and sleek steel from seeming too sterile and clinical. Also enlivening the structure are art by local artist Tony Ortega and community schoolkids.
Since its founding in 1860 as Denver’s health center on the banks of Cherry Creek, this complex of medical facilities has grown to serve as headquarters for award-winning hospitals, emergency 911 response, community health services, poison, drug, and detox centers, and inmate care. The medical campus is a series of brick, glass, and steel buildings; OZ Architecture is planning a new $18 million, 60,000 square foot medical research lab. In 2009, Denver Health delivered 3698 babies.
The Webb Center for Primary Care, also known as the Burgundy and Green clinic, was completed in 2006 by Boulder Associates. Its 75,000 gross square feet on three stories (with basement and mechanical penthouse) provide plenty of space for medical offices to house the outpatient community health program of Denver Health & Hospital Authority’s main campus. Initially, doctors and residents of the La Alma/Lincoln Park neighborhood worried that the new La Mariposa Community Health Center walk-up clinic would seem too institutional after its relocation of less than a mile to this new building. Sustainable features include a heat-reflective roof, locally-manufactured and harvested building materials, cotton fiber ceiling tiles, and employee bicycle racks.
www.DenverHealth.org
Year Built: 2006
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: RTD #52
Denver Museum of Nature & Science – Leprino Family Atrium
Urban Adventures: B
2001 Colorado Blvd. (west entrance doors)
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer Associates
Three of the four large circular rings that structure the spacious atrium form a solar calendar, aligning with the sun as it sets behind the Rockies on both summer and winter solstices and vernal and autumnal equinoxes.
The Leprino Family Atrium on the west side of Denver’s Museum of Nature & Science was created in 2002 by Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer Associates to increase museum circulation and provide space for events and meetings, as in the Harry T. Lewis Community Room. Its three floors and outdoor fourth-story Anschutz Family Sky Terrace offer more than elevators and access to exhibits, the auditorium, and planetarium: the rings also keep afternoon sunlight from pouring through the museum’s west wall and ruining nearby light-sensitive dioramas and astronomical exhibits. That glassy west wall is offset by five degrees from vertical to keep the same afternoon sunlight from reflecting directly back at people enjoying the fountains or lake paths outside.
NOTES:
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Ues the Museum's WEST entrance for Doors Open Denver.
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On Saturday, April 16, the followiong areas are free during Doors Open Denver: Leprino Family Atrium (Levels 1, 2 & 3), Anschutz Family Sky Terrace and North Atrium public spaces (Museum Shop, T-Rex Cafe).
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On Sunday, April 17, the following areas are free during Doors Open Denver: Same as listed above, plus ALL permanent exhibitions as part of the SCFD Free Day (Real Pirates is NOT included).
www.DMNS.org
Year Built: 2002
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Public Transit: RTD #20, #32, #40
Denver Police Firearms Training Facility
Urban Adventures: M
3421 Park Avenue West
SAT 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Humphries Poli Architects
Inside the complex with distinctive fencing and one bold blue wall, tucked under a highway and beside a trainyard, are DPD traffic operations headquarters and a firing range.
www.DenverGov.org
Year Built: 2010
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Denver Police Traffic Operations
Urban Adventures: M
3381 Park Avenue West
SAT 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Humphries Poli Architects
Built in 2010 by Humphries Poli Architects and Haselden Construction, this group of industrial concrete structures recieved an Award of Citation from the American Institute of Architects’ Denver Chapter.
www.DenverGov.org/traffic_operations
Year Built: 2010
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Denver Public Library - Central Branch
Urban Adventures: B
10 West 14th Avenue Pkwy
SAT 1PM - 5PM SUN 1PM - 5PM
Architect: klipp Colussy Jenks Dubois & Michael Graves, FAIA
The Central Library serves the public from a mix of formal and informal spaces: community rooms and quiet reading areas, high-tech nerve centers and cozy storytime nooks.
The Central Library was designed as a collection of smaller, friendlier buildings within a huge building. Think of it as a dynamic little “village” on a downtown block. A mini skyline unto itself, the Library’s multi-hued towers, turrets and colonnades are a perfect example of the Post-Modern style. Inside, Grave’s signature color palette continues and unified the Library’s varied spaces and departments, including the original Central Library designed in 1956 by Burnham Hoyt.
www.DenverLibrary.org
Year Built: 1995
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: RTD routes 0, 9, 10, 16, 52, 83L, Civic Center Station
Denver Public Library: Ross Cherry Creek
Urban Adventures: B, G
305 Milwaukee Street
SAT 12PM - 4PM
Architect: Paul R. Reddy, AIA
The building was renovated by architect Michael Brendle in 1993 and underwent further changes in 2010, resulting in a stunning transformation of this modern space. Funded by the Better Denver Bond, the 2010 Studiotrope redesign employs light and color to create an inspired atmosphere.
Named for library benefactor Frederick R. Ross and designed by architect Paul R. Freddy, the Ross-Cherry Creek branch opened in 1962 and quickly became a favorite stop for Cherry Creek residents.
www.DenverLibrary.org
Year Built: 1962
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: RTD #1, #2, #6, #83L
Denver School of the Arts
Urban Adventures: B, D, J
7111 Montview Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: klipp Colussy Jenks Dubois
A 2003 renovation by Klipp Colussy Jenks Dubois Architects turned the Houston Fine Arts Center (formerly aligned with the Lamont School of Music and Colorado Women’s College) into the Denver School of the Arts’ home.
As the Rocky Mountain region’s only comprehensive arts magnet school for grades 6-12, it includes a 480 seat theater and 280 seat concert hall in addition to studios and classrooms for the pursuit of creative writing, stagecraft, visual and video arts, dance, and also more traditional academics.
www.dsa.dpsk12.org
Year Built: 2003
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Design Within Reach
Urban Adventures: D, G
2500 East 2nd Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 11AM - 5PM
Architect: Nichols Partnership
The studio is a colorful, minimalist design with high ceilings, lots of natural light and a loft-like vibe that is focused on showing contemporary, modern and mid-century designs in a gallery-like setting.
Located in the Cherry Creek shopping district among some of Denver's finest specialty shops, boutiques, spas, restaurants and galleries, our 4,098 square foot Studio benefits from a friendly neighborhood atmosphere and beautiful, natural environs. The Studio houses a large assortment of furniture for the bedroom, lounge, workspace and outdoors, as well as lighting and dining designs. Studio Proprietor Marc Burg skillfully oversees the Studio along with his friendly and knowledgeable Studio Associates.
www.dwr.com/denver
Year Built: 2006
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
District Three Police Station
Urban Adventures: M
1625 South University Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Reseutek Design Group
This police station is dominated by a three story central atrium that covers the width of the building, rising above and dividing the structure’s formal work area from support functions.
Glass walls and canted roof with skylights enable natural lighting through the lofty space all day; the atrium has been compared to a modernist cathedral. Behind art installations in the entry landscape and lobby, the building houses police offices, holding cells, interview rooms, kitchen, and fitness center, all within the station’s secured area.
www.DenverGov.org
Year Built: 2004
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Public Transit: RTD Light Rail, RTD #24/#79
Downtown Children’s Playground
Urban Adventures: B, C, I
Speer & Wewatta
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Halprin & Assoc
The winner of the 2008 and 2009 Parents' Picks quest to find the best park/playground in Denver, the Downtown Children's Playground is located in the heart of LoDo and includes playground equipment, colored concrete and rubberized surfacing, retaining walls and railings, landscaping, furniture, and an informal sand play area.
www. greenwayfoundation.org
Year Built: 1982
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access
DPAC Sculpture Park
Urban Adventures: C, D, H
1245 Champa Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: EDAW
Standing playfully beside Speer Boulevard on the lawn of the Denver Performing Arts Complex, this sculpture garden is best known for the 50’ piece “The Dancers” by Jonathan Borofsky depicting lithe white statues in graceful pose. The Sculpture Park is a unique outdoor venue in the heart of the Denver Theatre District.
www.ArtsComplex.com
Year Built: 1998
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access
Public Transit: Light Rail to Theatre District/Convention Center stop
Ellie Caulkins Opera House
Urban Adventures: E, H, L
1400 Curtis Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 1PM
Architect: Semple Brown Roberts
Built for Denver’s first Democratic National Convention, the Quigg Newton Municipal Auditorium was renovated in 2005. The Auditorium is now home to a state-of-the-art lyric opera house, colloquially referred to as “The Ellie” and the sophisticated Chambers Grant Salon.
Two incredible original works of art are on display in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House as part of Denver’s 1% For The Arts Program, which dedicates 1% of the cost of all Denver capital improvement projects to funding artwork specifically for the project. The life-like sculpture titled “Maria Mosina and Igor Vassine” by artist John DeAndrea stands in the lobby on the north side of the building, and a fascinating mural titled “Rehearsal” by artist Stephen Batura hangs on the south side of the lobby.
In the Chambers Grant Salon, three of the largest paintings Colorado artist Vance Kirkland ever created grace the walls, side-by-side, as a tribute to the performing arts showcased in the building. The paintings, titled Vibrations of Scarlet on Crimson, Space Mysteries and Explosions in Unknown Space were contributed by the Kirkland Museum.
A series of seven fine art tapestries by internationally renowned artist Herbert Bayer (1900 - 1985) are on display in the hallways of the opera house. The tapestries were contributed to the Ellie by long-time Denver art collectors, Jamie White and Andrew Sirotnak.
A dazzling chandelier, created by celebrated artist Dale Chihuly, hangs in the foyer of the Ellie. Overall, the chandelier in the Ellie incorporates 500 separate glass pieces and took about two and a half days to assemble and light correctly. Amazingly, there are no lights attached to the chandelier itself – it’s the way the light reflects off of the glass that creates a magnificent glow. Chihuly chandeliers are suspended from ceilings of the most celebrated spaces in the world.
www.ArtsComplex.com
Year Built: 2004
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: Light Rail to Theatre District/Convention Center stop
Gates Corporation
Urban Adventures: I
1551 Wewatte Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Chris Hylton
This 2002 ten-story LoDo office-building of over 285,000 square feet is home to the Gates Corporation (perhaps better known in Denver as the former Gates Rubber Company), producer of automotive and industrial belts and hoses.
Despite the corporation’s humble start with Charles Gates’ 1911 purchase of the Colorado Tire and Leather Company for $3500, it succeeded with such products as the Durable Tread tire-reinforcement strip and the rubber and fabric V-belt, of which Gates is still the world’s largest manufacturer. During its heyday, Gates was Denver’s largest employer and America’s sixth-largest rubber manufacturer. While still known as Colorado Tire and Leather and located at 11th and Broadway, the company produced horse halters endorsed by Buffalo Bill Cody; it moved to the famous 80-acre factory at I-25 and Broadway in 1914 after renaming as the International Rubber Company, and finally left that location in 2003 for the present LoDo site following the termination of most local manufacturing in the 1990s. The new building with an organically curvilinear façade of glass and buff has a full fitness center, Energy Star-labeled amenities, and the familiar cursive Gates logo posted on high.
www.Gates.com
Year Built: 2002
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms
Public Transit: 16th Street Mall Shuttle
Hyatt Regency Denver at CO Convention Center
Urban Adventures: E, H
650 15th Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: klipp
Opened in late 2005 as Denver’s first high-rise in two decades, this hotel designed by Klipp and Brennan Beer Gorman covers a full city block with 37 stories to contain 1,100 rooms in over 60 thousand square feet of space. The areas open to the public during Doors Open Denver are the lobby, bar and restaurant (1st & 27th floor lounge only).
Outside are limestone, granite, zinc, and precast concrete, with a Ruskin quote of steel imbedded in stone; inside are nearly 4,000 pieces of art by primarily local artists including Climbers in the main lobby and video art of Colorado scenes in the elevators.
www.DenverRegency.Hyatt.com
Year Built: 2005
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: Light Rail to Theatre District/Convention Center stop
INVESCO Field at Mile High
Urban Adventures: B
1701 Mile High Stadium Circle
SAT 10AM - 2PM SUN 10AM - 2PM
Architect: HNTB & Fentress Bradburn Architects and Bertram A. Bruton Architects
Invesco Field is a replacement to Mile High Stadium on the same site at one mile above sea level. The Bronco statue poised atop the south scoreboard was named “Bucky” by fans, cast in 1975 from a model of Roy Rogers’ horse Trigger.
Located in the Sun Valley neighborhood, Invesco Field is known for its curvilinear crown of lights and metal skeleton frame surrounding brick. Invesco Field contains both the Ring of Fame, created in 1984 by Broncos owner Pat Bowlen to honor significant players’ names on a band encircling the stadium, and the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame Museum, created in 1964 with the help of future inductee Byron “Whizzer” White and built here at Invesco with a business plan by D.U. Daniels College of Business students and design by students at C.U. Denver’s Graduate School of Architecture. The playing field at Invesco is natural grass, made of four types of Kentucky Bluegrass overseeded with perennial ryegrass, with a network of fiber sewn vertically into the turf. This grass roots into a layer of sand, crossed by 21 miles of tubing for heating and suction drainage.
INVESCO is owned by the Denver Metropolitan Football Stadium District, was designed by HNTB, built at a cost of $364.2 million, and named by investment firm Invesco for $120 million.
The Bronco statue poised atop the south scoreboard was named Bucky by fans. In 1975 he was cast from a model of Roy Rogers’ horse Trigger (with Roy’s permission), and at 27 feet weighs 1600 pounds of fiberglass and steel.
Invesco Field is surrounded by public art: “Mountainscape” to the east side is a circular arrangment of local boulders, “Equipment Field” to the west is a sculpture garden of oversized football equipment in marble and aluminum, “Pigskin Variations” to the north are sporty sandstone and bronze pieces, and Pat Bowlen’s Florentine creation “The Broncos” to the south is a team of five broncos, one mare, and one colt, all at 150% lifesize and charging uphill over a water feature that pumps 850 gallons per minute and is heated to create steam in the winter.
www.InvescoFieldatMileHigh.com
Year Built: 1999
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Public Transit: RTD Light Rail, INVESCO stop
JW Marriott Cherry Creek
Urban Adventures: E, G
150 Clayton Lane
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Tryba Architects
Designed by David Owen Tryba Architects where a Sears parking lot used to be, this 11-story hotel has Colorado style in its wood floors and artwork by local artists including John Fielder.
The JW Marriott Denver Cherry Creek building is truly an example of newer Denver architecture, as it is just six years old. The building combines the luxurious and rustic, from its 196 guest rooms with custom millwork and granite and marble bath to its renovated lobby, stone-walled restaurant, and Antoine du Chez spa. It also offers 8400 square feet of meeting space including a 3,150 square foot ballroom.
The building reflects all that is best about Denver’s sparkling Cherry Creek North neighborhood. The focus is on simple elegance. Note the wood floors in the lobby, restaurant and fitness center, which bring a true Colorado feel to these warm spaces. Take a moment to appreciate the artwork throughout, which features Colorado artists such as John Fielder. Step inside the restaurant, aptly named Second Home, and sample some of the comfort food produced by Chef Jeff Bolton. The Adega, in the back of the restaurant, features a wine wall which showcases many of our featured wines and provides a hypnotic light show…stand a moment and watch the lights change. Join us on the terrace for our monthly chef class where you will learn a dish to cook at home, or enjoy our renowned pajama-themed Sunday Brunch (kids in pajamas eat free!). The meeting space on the second floor of the hotel was extensively renovated in 2010, and the sleeping rooms have all been renovated in the past six months. Stylish, welcoming, and above all, comfortable…this is the best of modern Denver.
www.JWMarriottDenver.com
Year Built: 2004
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art
Urban Adventures: D
1311 Pearl St.
SAT 10AM - 5PM SUN 10AM - 5PM
Architect: Maurice Biscoe, AIA, & Henry Hewitt, AIA, (1910-11); Chip Melick, AIA, Rachel Lawrence, Sarah Boulet (1998-99)
The architects were commissioned to create the original Arts & Crafts studio (precursor to the Denver Art Museum) by Henry Read, one of the 13 founders of the Artists’ Club. It is now the oldest commercial art building in Denver.
NOTE: No children under the age of 13 are allowed. This building was first used for Henry Read’s “Students’ School of Art.” The Arts and Crafts style was adventurous for the time. The location also served as a meeting place for the fledgling Denver Art Museum until 1922. Kirkland Museum is a National Trust Associate Site in the Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios Group, the only one in the eight-state Mountain/Plains region. In 2002 a brick addition provided for more space, disabled accessibility and Frank Lloyd Wright windows while preserving a view of the original studio’s exterior wall and roof tiles. This Museum displays an extensive international decorative arts collection with over 3,300 examples of Arts and Crafts, Bauhaus, Art Deco, Modern and Pop Art on display. A modernistic collection of regional painters, sculptors, ceramists, furniture-designers, and a retrospective of Colorado painter Vance Kirkland (1904-1981) are also featured.
www.KirklandMuseum.org
Year Built: 1910-11; 1998-99 (addition)
Photography Allowed: No flash photography
Services Provided: Disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse
Urban Adventures: H
520 West Colfax Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: klipp
The Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse includes 29 courtrooms and space for many of Denver’s judicial agencies, and is the third and final building of the Downtown Denver Justice Center Campus, a project authorized by Denver voters in the 2005 Bond.
The Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse, located at 520 West Colfax Avenue across from the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center, is a five story, 310,000 square foot building that houses 29 courtrooms. It provides space for District Attorney, City Attorney, Clerks of Court, Public Defender, Probation Offices, Jury Assembly, Jury Commissioner and temporary inmate holding for both adults and juveniles. The courthouse is also connected to the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center via an underground tunnel designed for the transport of inmates between the detention center and courthouse.
The Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse was constructed with sustainability in mind. The Rocky Mountain News building, which occupied the land purchased from the Denver Newspaper Agency by the City during the Webb administration, was de-constructed rather than demolished, allowing the majority of the materials to be recycled. Sustainability standards include two “green” roofs, efficient lighting systems, natural ventilation of the atrium, water-use reduction and collection of recyclables. The building will offer bicycle storage and easy access to public transportation. The Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse was constructed with the goal of achieving a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold rating from the US Green Building Council (USGBC), which is currently pending.
The Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse was named after Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey and Judge James C. Flanigan. Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey was an early 20th Century Denver judge who established the Juvenile and Family Relations Court in 1907. Judge Lindsey pioneered the use of a stand-alone juvenile court system that still exists in Denver today, and was known as the “kids’ judge.” Lindsey’s legacy includes fighting the Klu Klux Klan and exposing political corruption, which he wrote about in his book, The Beast.
Judge James C. Flanigan was the first African American to serve in the following positions: Deputy District Attorney, Municipal Court Judge for the City and County of Denver and Denver District Court Judge. During his legal career in the courts and as a Deputy District Attorney, Judge Flanigan demonstrated excellence in the legal profession and modeled a generous spirit to all.
www.DenverGov.org
Year Built: 2010
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Millennium Bridge
Urban Adventures: C, D
1610 Little Raven St.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Steve Chucavich; Ove Arup Partners and ArchitectureDenver
The Millennium Bridge links Riverfront Park and the Central Platte Valley neighborhood with the 16th Street Mall. Welded to its 200-foot steel mast are taut cables pulling only one side of the deck into a stiff concrete-reinforced arc.
Bordering the Platte, Riverfront Park is a new community of several architectural styles, scales, and materials, with a narrow waterside park of aspen and footpaths. Bordering the Platte, Riverfront Park is a new community of several architectural styles, scales, and materials, with a narrow waterside park of aspen and footpaths. The 2002 Millennium Bridge by Ove Arup Partners and ArchitectureDenver links Riverfront Park and the Central Platte Valley neighborhood with the 16th Street Mall. Welded to its 200-foot steel mast are taut cables pulling only one side of the deck into a stiff concrete-reinforced arc.
www.DenverGov.org
Year Built: 2002
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partian disabled access, paid parking
Public Transit: 16th Street Mall Shuttle
Mod Livin’
Urban Adventures: D
5237 East Colfax Avenue
SAT 10AM - 9PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Unknown
Originally the Continental Pharmacy and Liquor Store, there is Terrazzo throughout the building and a loft space that led to a hair studio where Mamie Eisenhower was reported to have weekly visits.
It was common to have a liquor store piggyback onto a retail location. Thought called a “pharmacy” it was more like a dry goods store, including a lunch counter and soda fountain. Part of the space was leased to Guys ‘n Dolls Furniture in the 1950’s. At various times the location was also a meat market, pool hall, TV rental outlet and a non-profit outlet. The current owners have worked hard over the past decade to upgrade the store and Colfax location.
www. ModLivin.com
Year Built: Unknown
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA DENVER)
Urban Adventures: D, I
1485 Delgany Street
SAT 10AM - 6PM SUN 10AM - 6PM
NOTE: Entrance fee is ten cents during Doors Open Denver weekend.
Architect: David Adjaye, Hon. FAIA; Davis Partnership Architects w/G. Cabell Childress, FAIA
This new facility supports rather than defines the Museum’s mission. It is an environmentally sustainable building, receiving the distinction Gold LEED Certified, a first among contemporary art museums.
Located between LoDo and RiverFront Park in downtown Denver, MCA Denver is housed in an environmentally sustainable 27,000 square foot building. The design supports its mission as a non-collecting contemporary institution devoted to presenting art of our time. The architectural program, based on the Golden Proportion, creates a balance between five principles: art, architecture, light, nature and human experience. Come explore the five exhibition spaces and experience the “Museum Without a Front Door.” Free tours (30-40 minutes) will be given at 12:00 pm, 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm. Upcoming exhibitions include Dario Robleto, Allison Smith, Hermann Nitsch.
www.MCADenver.org
Year Built: 2007
Photography Allowed: Photography allowed but no flash
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, food/beverage service
Public Transit: Light Rail Union Station, 16th Street Mall Shuttle, Cherry Creek bike path
Olinger Moore Howard Chapel
Urban Adventures: F
4345 West 46th Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Unknown
This mortuary’s exterior is decorated by ceramic-glazed Italianate columns and gothic arches. The chapel features original stained glass and a carved oak wall; the gothic-top doors are original oak, quarter-sawn for better graining.
www.OlingerMooreHoward.com
Year Built: 1961
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, ample free parking, food & beverages offered
Plus Gallery
Urban Adventures: D
2501 Larimer St.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Steve Chucovich
Located in the century-old flue of the Benjamin Moore Paint Factory, this art gallery sits at the entrance to the RiNo Art District. Artists featured in this gallery have contributed to the collections of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City and the City and County of Denver.
The gallery has existed since 2001, but not until its owners and architect Steve Chucovich renovated a remnant of the paint factory into a two-story exhibition space did Plus Gallery move here in 2009 to be named “Art Space of the Year” and “Best New Gallery” by the Denver Post and Westword. This site highlights the integration of contemporary art into an intimate and pristine environment within a historically dynamic structure. During DOD there will be an exhibition of paintings by Denver artist Bruce Price, named as the top abstract painter in Denver in 2005 by the Rocky Mountain News.
www.plusgallery.com
Year Built: 2009
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Regis University - Adult Learning Center
Urban Adventures: F
3333 Regis Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Lamar Kelsey & Assoc.
This structure which now houses the Adult Learning Center of Regis, formerly housed the Regis Jesuit High School. After the high school and college separated in 1979, the college acquired the building but the high school stayed until moving to its new southeast Denver campus in 1990.
The Adult Learning Center contains learning space of the College for Professional Studies, which with more than 13,000 adult students in classroom and online courses boasts more adult learning participants than any other Jesuit university in the U.S.
www. Regis.edu
Year Built: 1975
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms
Regis University - Field House
Urban Adventures: F
3333 Regis Blvd.
SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Roland M. Johnson
The low-slung red Regis Field House contains offices of the Athletic Department, locker rooms, Newland Center conference room, swimming pool, and a 3,000 seat gymnasium serving the basketball and volleyball teams.
Ground was broken for its construction on April 27, 1959; the finished building was dedicated on May 2, 1960 and remodeled in 1995 to accommodate 11 growing NCAA Division II athletic programs.
www. Regis.edu
Year Built: 1960
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms
Regis University - Loyola Hall
Urban Adventures: F
3333 Regis Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Patrick D. Horgan
Opened to house classrooms, offices and the library, Loyola Hall was remodeled in 1979 and still contains classrooms and offices for Regis’ Academic Dean and criminal justice, forensics, sociology, and religious studies programs.
www. Regis.edu
Year Built: 1951
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms
Regis University - Pomponio Science Center
Urban Adventures: F
3333 Regis Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Lamar H. Simmons & Robert Husmann
Created as Regis’ science center, this building earned architects Lamar H. Simon and Robert Husmann an award from the Society of American Registered Architects. The building was renovated in 2008 with funding from the Pomponio family.
www. Regis.edu
Year Built: 1966
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms
Regis University - St John Francis Chapel
Urban Adventures: E, F
3333 Regis Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Soderstrom Architects
This chapel was designed as a replacement to Regis University’s World War II-era chapel. Its articulated windows improve interior sound quality and offer not only natural lighting but also a mountain view, and the narthex has decorated sliding doors that can open to increase seating in the sanctuary.
The chapel contains tiles made of auto glass, a glycol-circulation snowmelt system buried beneath its sidewalks, and flexible lighting system to showcase with maximum efficiency the beautiful wooden ceiling or exterior hardscape.
www. Regis.edu
Year Built: 2005
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms
Ritchie Center for Sports & Wellness – University of Denver
Urban Adventures: B, K
2240 East Buchtel Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Davis Partnership Architects/G. Cabell Childress, FAIA
The Ritchie Center is a Landmark D.U. building whose proportions and details were inspired by the hilltop cathedral in Assisi, Italy. NOTE: Multiple ticketed events are taking place throughout Doors Open Denver weekend. Access and parking will be restricted.
The Ritchie Center is constructed of Hansen sandstone, limestone and copper, and is home to nationally recognized venues like Magness Arena and the Coors Fitness Center, as well as Denver’s finest Olympic–size swimming pool, El Pomar Natatorium. The University atmosphere, the superiority of facilities, the variety of programming and an unrelenting passion to provide only the best experiences for our community have made this building one of Denver’s most popular sports & wellness center.
The 440,000-square-foot Daniel L. Ritchie Center for Sports & Wellness serves as a fitness and recreation hub for the University of Denver community and for citizens of the metropolitan area. With its timeless architecture and state-of-the-art facilities, the center is named after the University's 16th chancellor in recognition of his leadership and dedication. The Ritchie Center is a landmark DU building whose proportions and details were inspired by the hilltop cathedral in Assisi, Italy. It is the home of the University's Pioneer athletics program, which fields 17 men’s and women's NCAA Division I teams. The center also is home to a full array of youth and adult recreation programs and venues for civic and entertainment events. The Ritchie Center also features the Pat Bowlen Strength and Conditioning complex used by NCAA Division 1 student athletes for conditioning and training purposes. The Coors Fitness Center is a world-class work-out facility open for use by students, faculty, and surrounding community and neighborhood members. Other amenities in the building include a sports medicine facility, spacious equipment areas and dedicated team locker rooms and lounges for all Pioneer varsity student-athletes. In addition, the facility houses a Health and Counseling Center for University students.
The building is constructed of Hansen sandstone, limestone and copper, and is home to nationally recognized venues like Magness Arena, the Coors Fitness Center as well as Denver’s finest Olympic-size swimming pool, El Pomar Natatorium. Amongst an array of meeting and conference room spaces, the center showcases the Marion Gottesfeld Room and Williams Tower and Carillon, an elegant space for small events and gatherings of up to 150 people adorned with eight Italian marble columns.
The University atmosphere, the superiority of facilities, the variety of programming and the unrelenting passion to provide only the best experiences for the community have made this building one of Denver’s most popular sports venue. A design collaboration between G. Cabell Childress and the Davis Partnership, the building is considered a DU landmark. Its use of load-bearing masonry provides a very efficient building envelope that imparts high thermal mass, tempering Colorado’s quickly varying weather. www.recreation.du.edu
Year Built: 1999
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Disabled Access
Public Transit: RTD Light Rail University Station; RTD routes #21, #24, #79
RNL
Urban Adventures: D, H
1050 17th Street. #A200
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Flato Moore (Independence Plaza); RNL
RNL’s global headquarters was designed to meet Gold LEED Certification for Commercial Interiors. The dramatic 44,000 square foot space is a showcase for sustainable design for commercial interiors and the advancement of design for the workplace.
RNL is a global, full-service design firm specializing in sustainable, integrated design. The firm’s Denver offices, designed by RNL in 2007, are located on the second and third floors of a wedge-shaped building within Independence Plaza. At 44,000-square-feet, RNL’s space focuses on providing a collaborative, inspiring work environment while highlighting the firm’s commitment to sustainable design.
The experience begins with the wide open space of the reception area. With twelve-foot-high ceilings, glass fronted conference rooms, and abundant natural light, the gracious reception area is perfect for presentations, client tours, and entertainment. The focal point of the space is the connecting stair which leads employees and visitors seamlessly between the two floors and allows users to get a sense of the work, culture, and design excellence of the firm. Beneath the stair is the ‘hub’, an impromptu meeting area where discussions take place over coffee while presentations are projected onto the large projection screen or showcased on the flat-panel TV. The RNL office space is vibrant with bold accent colors over a sleek background of black carpeting with white and aluminum systems furniture.
Certified LEED-CI (Commercial Interiors) GOLD by the U.S. Green Building Council, RNL’s office provides ample natural daylight and uses recycled and renewable materials as well as energy efficient lighting and mechanical systems. The reception lobby and several conference rooms make use of renewable cork flooring, while recycled-content red rubber flooring ascents the stair treads. Workspaces are floored with cradle-to-cradle carpeting and low-VOC paints are used throughout the space. Occupancy sensors control lighting in bathrooms and conference rooms, and light shelves, a product that brings natural daylight further into interior spaces, is currently being tested in a portion of the second floor open office area. The RNL office is an educational tool with signage mounted throughout the office explaining the sustainable innovations or products that have been integrated into the workplace. RNL participates in the building’s single-stream recycling program and is powered by wind energy purchased through Excel Energy.
www.RNLDesign.com
Year Built: 2007
Photography Allowed: In designated areas
Services Provided: Disabled access; public restrooms; paid parking
Public Transit: 16th Street Mall Shuttle; Light Rail
Robert & Judi Newman Center for the Performing Arts
Urban Adventures: K, L
2344 East Iliff Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: G. Cabell Childress, FAIA
This is a building for the performing arts lover as the Center presents international touring artists, local performing arts organizations, as well as the award•winning musicians, singers and thespians of the University of Denver. Twenty minute building tours will be offered to the public every 15 minutes beginning in the Joy Burns Plaza (building lobby).
In addition to touring the Newman Center facilities, you can also attend any of the Lamont School of Music student recitals happening this weekend. Lamont musicians are of the highest caliber and the recitals are free and open to the public. Ask your tour guide for more information. On Saturday during Doors Open Denver weekend, the Denver Young Artist Orchestra welcomes visitors to observe their rehearsal in Room 130 in the observation deck. On Sunday, the Lamont Opera will present their last performance of Puccini’s “Suor Angelica and Gianni Scicchi.” Tickets are required for this performance, which may be purchased at the Newman Center Box Office in the plaza.
The Newman Center’s façade is made from Indiana limestone, Hansen stone and sandstone. Wherever there is pink Hansen stone along the outside, there is a creative or performing space behind it, including all the faculty offices of the Lamont School of Music. The North side of the building features two 24•foot high bas relief Indiana limestone carvings created by two stone carvers in Denver, Madeleine Weiner and Kathy Caricof. Below and behind the Jazz Musicians relief on the East side is the
Jazz rehearsal room; the sculpture of classical musicians and vocalists protect the vocal rehearsal room.
The Center was designed as a series of freestanding buildings separated from one another by a two•inch acoustical joint. This gap creates an air space that abates vibration from traveling from one space to the other. Therefore, the Newman Center can hold simultaneous performances and rehearsals in each of the major performance and rehearsal venues without creating any sound interference. In addition to being the home for the Lamont School of Music, the Newman Center contains three main concert venues: The June Swaner Gates Concert Hall, the Frederic C. Hamilton Family Recital Hall, and the Elizabeth Eriksen Byron Theatre.
The architecture of the Center should bring to mind classical forms of European architecture. The materials used in the building are also intended to convey a sense of tradition and permanence. The Joy Burns Plaza is, by day, a study and lounge area for faculty, students and staff; and by day, the main lobby for the three previously mentioned performance venues, and a striking reception hall. This elegant enclosed plaza features a high vaulted ceiling, transverse windows, Italian travertine marble floor, double columns, custom designed alabaster chandeliers, a 16th Century Flemish Tapestry, and custom made furniture by Daniel Strawn. The Box Office is also located in the plaza, where tickets may be purchased for all Newman Center performances.
www.NewmanCenterPresents.com
Year Built: 2002
Photography Allowed: No
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: RTD #24, RTD Light Rail University Station
Room & Board
Urban Adventures: D, G
222 Detroit Street
SAT 10AM - 7PM SUN 11AM - 6PM
Architect: Roth Sheppard Architects
This purveyor of clean modernist design entrusted Roth Sheppard Architects and Palace Construction to bring the same sensibility to a remodel of their 20,000 square foot Cherry Creek showroom.
The warehouse was clad in load-bearing concrete panels, which have been removed and replaced by steel framework to open and brighten the space. The exterior features a modern take on regional flourishes like stone, zinc shingles, log columns, and cantilevered overhang, as well as planting strips to screen and separate the building, parking lot, and curb view.
www.RoomAndBoard.com
Year Built: 1986
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms
Sheraton Downtown Denver Hotel
Urban Adventures: E, H
1550 Court Place
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Pei Cobb Freed & Partners
As part of Denver’s pioneering Court House Square development combining hotel, department store, public area, and parking, this block-long ultrasleek 22 story modern hotel tower was completed in 1960 and given the AIA National Honor Award in 1961.
The design by I.M. Pei’s architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners incorporates Mo-Sai precast concrete cladding from Salt Lake City and is descended from Le Corbusier’s modernist design principle “Unité d’Habitation,” which influenced the post-WWII creation of apartment blocks and led to the Brutalist style. Today the tower is connected via elevated bridge to the Sheraton main building across Court Place.
www.SheratonDenverDowntown.com
Year Built: 1960
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: 16th Street Mall Shuttle
Stapleton Central Park Recreation Center
Urban Adventures: B, J
9651 Martin Luther King Blvd.
SAT 8AM - 3PM SUN 8AM - 3PM
Architect: Sink Combs Dethlefs
On January 29, 2011, this recreation center with views of the old Stapleton control tower became Denver Parks’ newest and largest. Within its 57,000 square feet are a zero-depth pool, four lane lap pool, lazy river, cardiovascular training area, spinning studio, collegiate sports gym, and child-care facility.
Located at the entrance corridor to Stapleton's new Central Park Recreation Center, artist team Marek Walzcak and Wesley Heiss are currently installing an interactive text-based project called thoughtballoons. The video screen and motion sensors will create an interactive seating area in the entrance to the Recreation Center, where impromptu dialog boxes will encourage participation from patrons. Thoughtballoon's sensors locate where people sit and via a computer, the screen 'inserts' a thought balloon above their head, inviting participation and further dialogue. The text was created with the help of the local community-including students, comedians and residents of Stapleton and the environs. To be a part of this work of public art, you can contribute via a community website portal: http://thoughtballoons.org/.
www.DenverGov.org/Recreation
Year Built: 2011
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access
Stapleton Central Parks & Open Space
Urban Adventures: C, J
35th Avenue & Quebec Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
No matter where you are in Stapleton, you're never more than five minutes from a beautiful, green open space -- a Stapleton park. Stapleton's 80-acre Central Park is the 3rd largest public park in Denver.
In the summer, Stapleton's Central Park spoils the community with lakes, bluffs, trees, and walking paths. Whether you enjoy beautiful Denver, Colorado by biking, walking, running, or playing, you can enjoy all of those activities in the open space in Stapleton's parks. Stapleton is full of pocket parks which connect your neighbors by shared spaces. In designing the community, these pocket parks were created to supplement large private yards with communal and publicly maintained areas. Sprinkled among the green spaces are special amenities, like the community garden, climbing wall, skate park, and playgrounds with water fountains for you, your kids and your dog.
There are 25 miles of walking and biking paths in Stapleton, which connect to Denver's 850 miles of bike trails. Sand Creek and Westerly Creek Greenway connect directly to the greater Denver Greenway system including the South Platte River and Cherry Creek Greenways. Westerly Creek Greenway is being restored by the Greenway Foundation and connects directly to Sand Creek. It is completely restored through Stapleton and offers both hard and soft trails. Adjacent to Stapleton, there is also the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, Bluff Lake Nature Center, and the Urban Farm at Stapleton. In addition to all the parks and open space, the Greenway connection makes Stapleton a weekend destination as well as an incredible place to live. Check out A Better Plan to learn more about Stapleton's connectivity by foot.
www.DenverGov.org/Recreation
Year Built: 2008
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access
Stapleton: East 29th Avenue Town Center
Urban Adventures: B, J
7351 East 29th Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: 4240 Architecture
Three years after Stapleton International Airport closed in 1995, Forest City Enterprises was named the property’s master developer; three years after that construction began on a “New Urbanist” master-planned sustainable community and after another three the East 29th Avenue Town Center was opened as the commercial heart of a new 4,700 acre Stapleton neighborhood.
Today the town center comprises nearly 175,000 square feet of retail and office space in several four-story buildings, whose brick and metal storefront facades hug the straight and curved streets approaching and describing the area’s anchor park, Founders Green. Within these red/orange and chrome buildings are such diverse tenants as realtors, veterinarians, confectioners, florists, and dentists. The new urban lifestyle professed by Stapleton’s creators is expressed in this near connection of town-center boutiques, restaurants, banks, and big-box grocery and retail stores to residential blocks via park systems, pedestrian and bike trails, and tree-lined parkway avenues for an area of efficiently-integrated working and living. Stapleton has 25 miles of paths, Denver’s third-largest park, LEED certification, and a 100% Energy Star-compliant building policy.
www.StapletonDenver.com
Year Built: 2008
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Stapleton Fellowship Church - Hangar 61
Urban Adventures: E, J
8700 East 21st Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 1PM - 4PM
Architect: Visioneering Studios
The Stapleton Fellowship Church will soon make its new home at Stapleton Hangar 61, a 1959 example of rare thin-shell concrete construction. It was designed by Fisher Fisher and Davis and engineered by Milo Ketchum to house the corporate turboprop Fairchild F-27 of Ideal Basic Cement, a company owned by the Boettcher family.
The 8,500 square foot building is essentially a diamond-shaped roof made of cement hyperbolic arch sections, supported by buttresses. It is rare not only in its construction style, but also as an historic building from Denver’s modern rather than early period, saved from redevelopment by local artists and preservationists.
www.StapletonDenver.com
Year Built: 1959
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
TAXI I, TAXI II & Freight
Urban Adventures: A
3455, 3457 & 3507 Ringsby Ct.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Will Bruder, AIA; David Baker, Harry Teague, AIA; Alan Brown, AIA & Semple Brown Design; Stephen Dynia, AIA
TAXI is an award-winning building and recent recipient of the American Institute of Architects Design Honor Award. TAXI resides at the intersection of great architecture, lively enterprise and art.
This site of the old Yellow Cab office was redeveloped in 2008 to provide residential and commercial space along the Platte River in Denver’s River North district. In two award-winning buildings, industrial elements such as exposed metal trusses, concrete floors, and twenty-foot ceilings are combined with luxuries like balconies and downtown or mountain views to earn the American Institute of Architects Design Honor Award. The project is located in one of Denver’s most interesting emerging neighborhoods, River North. Zeppelin Development’s 510 foot long “Landscraper” is home to 40 creative businesses and numerous urban dwellers.
Freight transforms a brick trucking terminal into a model for the new economy workplace. The open floor plan is full of creative surprises from its industrial past: loading docks and concrete floors to sophisticated modern features, efficient mechanical systems and floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the River. Reclaimed hockey panels and bowling alley material is highlighted throughout.
TAXI 1 is a 28,000 square foot, mid-century industrial brick building, formerly the dispatch center and garage for Yellow Cab. The building was transformed into multi-tenant, flex office space in 2001, facing the River. Fuel Café and outside patios characterize the building.
TAXI II is a 4-story, 500 foot long landscraper and mixed-use building. The building stretches long and thin along the ground with offices, studios Pilates Aligned and TAXI fitness on the ground floor. Architects, planners, a lawyer and tech designers occupy the second floor, and a mix of residents and businesses are on the third.
www.TaxiByZeppelin.com
Year Built: 2007
Green Features: Reuse of former industrial building, sustainable materials
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
Temple Emanuel
Urban Adventures: E
51 Grape Street
SUN 1PM - 4PM
Architect: Percival Goodman, FAIA; 1990 Addition: Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture
In 1952, a congregation of 930 households began to talk of building a new location for Temple Emanuel. Of primary concern was the lack of space for the Religious School and parking. The Temple was located at 16th and Pearl and had served the congregation for 55 years.
In 1953 the membership voted to relocate to the current location at Glencoe and Forest Streets south of First Avenue. The cost for the land and construction was to be $900,000. Percival Goodman, a nationally known architect from New York City was chosen. He had already designed fifteen synagogues and had specialized in this area.. Ground breaking was June 5, 1955 and included in the attendees were Mayor Quigg Newton and Lieutenant Governor Stephen McNichols.
In January, 1957, the first of the building phases were completed. The new school had 22 classrooms and a library, plus a large social hall and kitchen. The offices were moved by May. That part of the construction ended up costing $950,000. The sanctuary was now being fully designed and was to cost $585,000, also significantly more than planned. In 1959 there was another groundbreaking.
It was decided to bring some artifacts from the old temple and others were created for the new space. Jean Neufeld designed a contemporary eternal light for the Mediation Room. She was most impressed by the unusual stained glass windows designed by Robert Pinart for the sanctuary. The windows were constructed in New York with inch thick glass from France. The ark stands 24 feet high and is made of Colorado marble. The tablets representing the Ten Commandments are enhanced by marble imported from Israel. The modernist eternal light was designed and fabricated by Jordan Steckel, a New York artist.
A three manual Austin organ was chosen and came to be recognized as one of the finest in the city. The dedication ceremony lasted 3 days, the weekend of October 28, 1960. The congregation was urged to move from the brick and motor of the building to infusing what they had built with life, spirit and purpose. Temple Emanuel is one of the largest and most sophisticated examples of Percivals example of Usonian Style. The Robert Pinart stained glass windows cover 5,000 square feet. Other artists with work in the building are Jordan Steckel, Edgar Britten and Ted Egri all of regional and national reputation.
www.EmanuelDenver.org
Year Built: 1959
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
The CELL (The Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab)
Urban Adventures: H
99 West 12th Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Daniel Libeskind, AIA & Davis Partnership Architects
The CELL is a non-profit multimedia exhibit exploring global terrorism and is based in the Denver Civic Center Cultural Complex across from the Denver Art Museum.
The CELL's exhibit "Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: Understanding the Threat of Terrorism" has been open to the public since February of 2009. With content developed by world-renowned experts, this interactive experience provides visitors with an in-depth understanding of terrorism and advocates and empowers individuals with the tools to become more informed, involved, and prepared in order to help create a better, safe world.
www. TheCell.org
Year Built: 2009
Photography Allowed: Outside of building only
Services Provided: Full disabled access, paid parking
The Curtis – a Doubletree Hotel
Urban Adventures: E, H
1405 Curtis St.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: RNL
Built as hotel and office space, this Executive Tower building emerged from failed renovations and bankruptcy as a mixed-use development in 2007, including 336-room hotel, Auraria student housing, restaurants and coffee shop.
A pop-culture theme permeates all: lobby cartoons, Elvis wake-up calls, iPod speaker systems, retro toys, hula hoop contests, giant Lite Brite art installation, and even “All Together Now” 42-foot-high sculpture of colored steel building blocks sitting at 14th and Curtis.
www.TheCurtis.com
Year Built: 1972
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking ($5 discounted parking available)
University of Denver - Boettcher Center West
Urban Adventures: K
2050 East Iliff Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Robert Kenneth Fuller, FAIA
The Boettcher Center for Science, Engineering and Research remains as an important space for several of the science departments, including the School of Engineering and Computer Science as well as the Department of Geography. The building stands as a prime example of 1960s’ architecture.
The Boettcher Center for Science, Engineering and Research was dedicated in 1963. When it was built, the Boettcher Center stood on the forefront of innovation in science building design. The Boettcher Foundation offered the University a grant for the construction of a science facility. The original plan for Boettcher called for eight buildings within a complex, but the final project consisted of three buildings. Two newer additions to DU science facilities, the Seeley G. Mudd Building and Olin Hall are near the Boettcher Center.
www.DU.edu
Year Built: 1963
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: RTD Light Rail, University stop
University of Denver - Daniels College of Business
Urban Adventures: K
2101 South University Blvd.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: G. Cabell Childress, FAIA/Anderson Mason Dale Architects
Set on the University of Denver campus, this historic red brick building houses the Daniels College of Business (established 1908, making it the 8th oldest accredited business school in the nation, and also alma mater to Pete Coors and two U.S. Senators).
The Daniels College of Business’ mission is to educate ethical business leaders, advance the theory and practice of business, and make a positive global impact. Daniels welcomes the public to the building and encourages visitors to stop by the Marcus Commons on the first floor for light refreshments and to receive building tours from student ambassadors. It is an updated tech-friendly facility that offers wireless throughout, and combines classic collegiate-style architecture with the state-of-the-art technology of more recent campus additions like the Fritz Knoebel School of Hospitality Management.
The building symbolizes the College’s commitment to its mission and to the business community. The building creates an environment to facilitate a bridge between academia and the world of practice. The Daniels College of Business is the 8th oldest collegiate business school in the nation. Sited at a prominent gateway to the campus, the building is nestled between Klauder’1928 Margery Reed Hall and Roeschlaub’1890 University Hall. A central focal point of the life of the building is the two-story Marcus Commons, which forms a backdrop to Graduation Green.
There are eleven case-study style tiered classrooms and nine seminar rooms within the building. A variety of adjunct spaces include large and mid-sized meeting rooms, small breakout rooms, a computer lab, and centers for programs and academic departments. There are 47 miles of data wiring in the building allowing convenient access to technology for students, staff, and faculty. Underground parking accommodates 110 cars. The building is constructed of 175,000 structural bricks and 350,000 “DU blend” veneer brick units. Limestone trim, cast-in-place concrete floors, bronze hardware, Appalachian rift-sawn white oak trim, Welsh quarry floor tiles, and steel windows compose the material palette. The building emphasizes the University’s commitment in its newer architecture to complement its historic build-up by blending notable elements of its neighbors in a manner that respects and emphasizes the cohesiveness of the University’s campus.
www.Daniels.du.edu
Year Built: 1999
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, paid parking
Public Transit: RTD Light Rail, University stop
University of Denver - F. W. Olin Hall
Urban Adventures: K
2190 East Iliff Avenue
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: G. Cabell Childress, FAIA/Davis Partnership Architects
The copper cupola-topped building was funded mainly by the F.W. Olin Foundation, a charitable endowment created by baseball player and munitions manufacturer Franklin Walter Olin in 1938 to benefit American colleges.
Formerly Science Hall from 1912 to 1996, F.W. Olin Hall was created in 1997 to serve a growing number of University of Denver chemistry and biology students. Other notable schools with Olin buildings include Johns Hopkins, Tufts, Cornell, Colgate, and Marquette; one of the published studies done at D.U.’s Olin Hall focuses on the relationship between birds and wind turbines. F.W. Olin Hall contains laboratories and classrooms for the Departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry.
www.DU.edu
Year Built: 1997
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms
Public Transit: RTD Light Rail, University stop
US Environmental Protection Agency
Urban Adventures: I
1595 Wynkoop Street
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects
EPA’s regional headquarters includes one of the first green roofs of its kind in the state of Colorado. The roof provides air and water quality benefits and reduces building heating and cooling needs.
NOTE: All visitors will be required to have a photo ID and pass through a federal security screening process.
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca completed this 292,000 square foot EPA regional headquarters in January 2007, on a site formerly housing a postal annex. The nine stories of offices plus retail and underground parking take a climate-responsive form: two L-shaped wings around a central atrium. The atrium provides natural lighting and acts as public lobby and thermal buffer, while the south wing captures passive solar heat and the north wing fends off prevailing winds.
Other environmentally sustainable features of this LEED Gold building include: recycled, local, or natural building materials such as cork floors, bamboo wall panels, and doors made of rice hull cores; high efficiency and waterless plumbing fixtures; energy-efficient electrical system with occupancy sensors, daylight-responsive lighting, individual climate control, and solar power; and 20,000 square foot green roof covered by three terraces of native drought-tolerant plant species to absorb sunlight and stormwater. Architects created this structure with a mind to incorporate state-of-the-art green building techniques with the character of the LoDo historic district. A nine-story atrium casting natural exterior sunlight through the offices is just one means of building design reducing environmental impact.
The US EPA regional headquarters is an excellent example of “green building” and how the built environment can reduce its environmental footprint. The public is welcome inside the main floor that features an impressive atrium vaulting upwards for nine stories, harvesting daylight high above, and casting light throughout the building. The building incorporates strategies that reduce impacts to the natural environment, better conserve energy, use less natural resources, reduce waste and create a healthier workplace environment. Building tours will be offered in addition to information displays. NOTE: As a federal office building, there are security requirements to enter the building. All visitors will be required to have a photo ID and pass through a federal security screening process.
www.epa.gov/region8/building/
Year Built: 2006
Photography Allowed: No photo equipment allowed
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms
Public Transit: Light rail, local & regional buses, 16th Street Mall Shuttle, Bicycle Access from the Cherry Creek Bike Path
Wastewater Management – City of Denver
Urban Adventures: B
2000 W. 3rd Ave.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Barber Architecture/RNL
Housing administrative and operational personnel for the City of Denver, the building is also known as “Gotham City” by many Denver residents due to its appearance. The building is heavily used for conferences and community events.
The new buildings at Central Platte are Leed gold certified, use solar panels (Wastewater is still in the process of the transition) and were built based on strict environmental standards for energy and water conservation, carbon reductions, and maximized recycled content in all structural materials.
Wastewater Management Division has been at its current location since 1992, and houses administrative and operational personnel, as well as all Wastewater trucks. There is currently a project underway to expand the campus. WMD has also been used in several commercials, as well as hosting the off-beat production of “Urine Town” a few years ago. In 2008, much of the interior was updated with contemporary wall finishes and artwork. The best views are from the 4th floor decks, with downtown to the east and the mountains to the west. The City of Denver division maintains 1,500 miles of sewers and 550 miles of storm drains.
About 260 employees work here, with half of them in the field maintaining sewer lines and doing other outside work, such as collecting water samples. The other half of employees actually work in the office, doing work as varied as customer service to engineering. In addition, all street permits are issued in the building, as the department of public works transitions into a sort of headquarters for all city of Denver right-of-way activites.
The bridge was built in the late 1800’s along Third Avenue, which prior to the building of I-25 was a major thoroughfare in Denver. The bridge was abandoned after I-25 cut it in two but it stood until the city of Denver acquired the property.
Denver, which has a 1 percent public art requirement for capital projects, took the old bridge on the property, beefed it up and commissioned an artist to create a public art piece -- a pond with sculptures on either side of it that recirculates water.
www.denvergov.org/WasteWater
Year Built: 1992
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access; free parking
Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building
Urban Adventures: B
201 W. Colfax Ave.
SAT 10AM - 4PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Tryba Architects; RNL
Visit the home of 43 City agencies that relocated to this new civic gem in 2002.
Denver architects David Owen Tryba and RNL jointly developed and oversaw the construction of the building. While at the Webb Municipal Office Building notice the unique artworks displayed in the atrium as well as on the plaza facing the City and County Building. Help to create Box City (Saturday, April 16th from 10 am – 2 pm) with AIA Denver. Box City is a fun, unique children’s event that combines art and architecture, creative thinking, city planning design and construction.
www.DenverGov.org
Year Built: 2002
Green Features: LEED Gold Certified, highly efficient mechanical system, use of low impact materials, recycling program, green construction and purchasing policies
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Full disabled access, public restrooms
Public Transit: 16th St. Mall Shuttle
William Havu Gallery
Urban Adventures: D
1040 Cherokee Street
SAT 11AM - 5PM SUN 10AM - 4PM
Architect: Humphries Poli Architects
Designed by Humpries Poli Architects as part of the AIA award-winning Cherokee Lofts, this 1998 structure houses an art gallery.
The building’s concrete exterior matches the lofts’, and together they enclose a courtyard used to display outdoor sculpture. Work by Denver artist and C.U. Professor of Painting Homare Ikeda will be showed at the gallery.
www.WilliamHavuGallery.com
Year Built: 2000
Photography Allowed: Yes
Services Provided: Partial disabled access, public restrooms, free parking
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