Vanished Denver Landmarks


Book Description

From its 1858 birth, the Mile High City has undergone continuous change, with each successive generation putting its stamp on Denver's architectural character. Along the way, landmarks initially considered first class were later deemed disposable by those who had different visions of what Denver should be. Beloved buildings like the Tabor Grand Opera House, the Windsor Hotel and the Republic Building vanished. Historian Mark A. Barnhouse revisits these lost treasures along with the lesser known and rarely explored, including an apartment building dubbed "Denver's Bohemia," the humble abode of one of the early twentieth century's most successful novelists and the opulent mansion of a man who gave Denver three consecutive baseball championships.




Tattered Cover Book Store: A Storied History


Book Description

For more than five decades, the Tattered Cover has been Colorado's favorite source for books. Beginning with just 950 square feet, it has grown into a multistore operation and important cultural institution, the special place where people go for all things literary. It has been a forum for ideas, with hundreds of writers visiting each year to sign books and greet readers. It has proven itself a bastion of democracy, championing the First Amendment and readers' rights to privacy. Join Denver historian and onetime Tattered Cover employee Mark A. Barnhouse as he celebrates the store's first fifty years and tells stories from the thousands of author events it has hosted over the decades.




Denver Landmarks and Historic Districts


Book Description

A Timberline Book Denver Landmarks and Historic Districts, Second Edition is the newest, most thorough guide to Denver’s 51 historic districts and more than 331 individually landmarked properties. This lavishly illustrated volume celebrates Denver’s oldest banks, churches, clubs, hotels, libraries, schools, restaurants, mansions, and show homes. Denver is unusually fortunate to retain much of its significant architectural heritage. The Denver Landmark Preservation Commission (1967), Historic Denver, Inc. (1970), Colorado Preservation, Inc. (1984), and History Colorado (1879) have all worked to identify and preserve Denver buildings notable for architectural, geographical, or historical significance. Since the 1970s, Denver has designated more landmarks than any other US city of comparable size. Many of these landmarks, both well-known and obscure, are open to the public. These landmarks and districts have helped make Denver one of the healthiest and most attractive core cities in the United States, transforming what was once Skid Row into the Lower Downtown Historic District of million-dollar lofts and $7 craft beers. Entries include the Daniels & Fisher Tower, the Brown Palace Hotel, Red Rocks Outdoor Amphitheatre, Elitch Theatre, Fire Station No. 7, the Richthofen Castle, the Washington Park Boathouse and Pavilion, and the Capitol Hill, Five Points, and Highlands historic districts. Denver Landmarks and Historic Districts highlights the many officially designated buildings and neighborhoods of note. This crisply written guide serves as a great starting point for rubbernecking around Denver, whether by motor vehicle, by bicycle, or afoot.




The Smoky Hill Trail


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Denver


Book Description

A vivid account of the prehistory and history of Denver as revealed in its archaeological record, Denver: An Archaeological History invites us to imagine Denver as it once was. Around 12,000 B.C., groups of leather-clad Paleoindians passed through the juncture of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek, following the herds of mammoth or buffalo they hunted. In the Archaic period, people rested under the shade of trees along the riverbanks, with baskets full of plums as they waited for rabbits to be caught in their nearby snares. In the early Ceramic period, a group of mourners adorned with yellow pigment on their faces and beads of eagle bone followed Cherry Creek to the South Platte to attend a funeral at a neighboring village. And in 1858, the area was populated by the crude cottonwood log shacks with dirt floors and glassless windows, the homes of Denver's first inhabitants. For at least 10,000 years, Greater Denver has been a collection of diverse lifeways and survival strategies, a crossroads of interaction, and a locus of cultural coexistence. Setting the scene with detailed descriptions of the natural environment, summaries of prehistoric sites, and archaeologists' knowledge of Denver's early inhabitants, Nelson and her colleagues bring the region's history to life. From prehistory to the present, this is a compelling narrative of Denver's cultural heritage that will fascinate lay readers, amateur archaeologists, professional archaeologists, and academic historians alike.




Denver Dry Goods, The: Where Colorado Shopped with Confidence


Book Description

Over the course of eleven decades, the Denver Dry Goods and its predecessor, McNamara Dry Goods, proudly served Coloradoans, who knew they could 'shop with confidence' for the best quality at the fairest prices. Much more than the goods it sold, the store was a major institution that touched the lives of nearly every Denverite. Festive chandeliers adorned the four-hundred-foot-long main aisle during the holidays, and longtime salesclerks knew customers by name. The doors closed in 1987 and this fascinating history explores the cherished memories of Denver's most beloved department store.




Historic Sites and Landmarks That Shaped America [2 volumes]


Book Description

Exploring the significance of places that built our cultural past, this guide is a lens into historical sites spanning the entire history of the United States, from Acoma Pueblo to Ground Zero. Historic Sites and Landmarks That Shaped America: From Acoma Pueblo to Ground Zero encompasses more than 200 sites from the earliest settlements to the present, covering a wide variety of locations. It includes concise yet detailed entries on each landmark that explain its importance to the nation. With entries arranged alphabetically according to the name of the site and the state in which it resides, this work covers both obscure and famous landmarks to demonstrate how a nation can grow and change with the creation or discovery of important places. The volume explores the ways different cultures viewed, revered, or even vilified these sites. It also examines why people remember such places more than others. Accessible to both novice and expert readers, this well-researched guide will appeal to anyone from high school students to general adult readers.




Colorado Magazine


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The Colorado Magazine


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Colorado: Mapping the Centennial State through History


Book Description

In a sense, the State of Colorado was born not on August 1, 1876—when President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation admitting it to the Union as the thirty-eighth state—but on the day this great land was first depicted on a map. Over the centuries, each such map has become yet another precious link not only in the history of the state, but also in the ever evolving “Colorado” as imagined by its residents and, more broadly, by the rest of America. Colorado: Mapping the Centennial State through History provides a fascinating journey into the past of the Centennial State through gloriously detailed maps from the Library of Congress. Edited and with a foreword by renowned photo editor and author Vincent Virga, it also includes compelling historical essays by Colorado writer Stephen Grace. Together, these further weave the visually stunning cartographic record into a drama of settlement and change. Mapping States through History is the first series to assemble—in full color, state-by-state—an in-depth collection of rare, historically significant maps of the cities, states, counties, towns, and events that make up each of America’s fifty states. Produced in collaboration with the Library of Congress, it offers an extraordinary glimpse into the history of the United States through the maps and their narrative captions, as well as Vincent Virga’s foreword and historical essays by local writers. Each map thus becomes a virtual time machine that tells us much about the places we live in today.