The Matchless restaurant and lounge, under the hyperbolic arch in the pavilion which was originally part of I.M. Pei’s Mile High Center. You have to love that it included a trout pool and a fountain!

The pavilion, arch and restaurant are gone now, swallowed up by Norwest Plaza.
Pei’s Mile High Tower still peaks out of the plaza.

The Senate Lounge, across the street from the Capitol building, in the Argonaut Hotel. Is the cartoon a depiction of a typical 1959 state senator? The Argonaut still stands!

Senate Lounge act, Effie the Blond Tigress, backed by Denver Cool Jazz greats Bud Poindexter, Vince Limberg and Paul Warburton. I don’t know who the cat on vibes is in the upper pic!

It’s zero hour for the 1959 opening of Elitch’s Gardens. This is, of course, the original location of the amusement park. Elitch’s Theatre still stands at this old location.

Top of the Park room in the Park Lane Hotel, at the north end of Washington Park, “Denver’s Smartest Rendezvous”.

There are four apartment buildings in that spot now, and I don’t think they look like this, so I assume this building is gone.

Top of The Park engagement for cocktail-comedian/pianist Nino Nanni

The King Cole Showbar, a strip club located where Club Vinyl is today. There used to be some ghost-signage on the side of the building with the words King Cole and an arrow pointing down, but much of the original building collapsed under heavy snow, maybe 8 years ago. Bob and Sylvia released a fun Hee Haw styled comedy lp a few years later.

The Melody Lounge, “Denver’s Birdland”. These are all top-talent jazz
stars for 1959.

I am not sure, but I think this is where the Alpine Hotel is now.

Johnny Griffin at the Melody Lounge! “The Little Giant” was well-known in jazz circles for the breakneck speed at which he played!

Vaudeville revival at the Beacon Supper Club. Even the cashier sang!

“Denver has gone Lakeside“. This ad list the Sunday night stock car races and the indoor swimming pool.

Warren St. Thomas’ famous strip club, The Tropics! You got dinner, a comedian, a stripper and an indoor tropical storm! This is now the nightclub, Stone. Last time I checked, the hydraulics to raise and lower dancers from the floor and ceiling were still there!

Tura Satana is a well-known cult film star for her role in the 1966 Russ Meyer film Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

The Buerger Brothers Building in downtown Denver, designed 1929 by
Montana Fallis.

Buerger Brothers was a beauty supply company, so the beauty of the building itself was clearly important to them. They stayed in this building until 1972.

This building was built at the same time as Montana Fallis’ other surviving Art Deco Denver design, the Mayan Theatre.

Clad with beautiful terra cotta designs, this building is another grand example of Denver Art Deco.

In 1937, Buerger Brothers expanded into the neighboring building, which was given an Art Deco white tile makeover.

The Buerger Brothers Annex was originally the Denver Fire Clay Co. Building. Traces can be seen in the ghost signage on the brick side of the building.

My computer crashed, so it’s time for some links:

» First up is from Spiegel Online: 90 Years of Bauhaus. I usually don’t post links to slide shows, but this one is great.

» Next, 10 Modern Chairs that revolutionized sitting

» I can’t read any of this, but the designs are just incredible on this Russian site called Elff House

» Another slide show, but this one is also worth it, a new radical London bus design

» While we are in England, some beautiful nighttime photos of London from above

» To get around the skyscraper ban in Paris, architects have designed The Triangle, a 50-story pyramid that cast no shadows!

» An incredible building material, Light Transmitting Concrete

» A Cardboard Chair, winner of the Volvo For Life Design Award. Though, I don’t think setting a big red martini on it is such a good idea.

» Next, a cardboard house. . . the Universal World House.

» Instead of cardboard, how about caves, igloos or sewage pipes, the 10 Weirdest Hotels. I like the inside of a Yurt.

» An entire underground cave city in Turkey, Derinkuyu. The English translated text could have used a little editing by a native speaker.

» In Japan, the abandoned island city of Hashima

» Let’s take a quick look at the San Diego-Tijuana border

» Back in the U.S.A., some Strange and Unique Buildings. It’s nice they included the Air Force Academy Chapel, one of Colorado’s most important architectural achievements!

» Another strange building, this time from who-knows-where, from a site called Frinko

» This house design maybe the strangest of all. OK, maybe I was fooling around with that one.

» And lastly, from Life Magazine, an early Apollo spacesuit design. If you are old enough to remember the 1960s, you could get this suit for Major Matt Mason, G.I. Joe’s rival.

So this darn power surge knocked out my main computer. I thought surge protectors prevented that, but I guess not. It may be a little while before I can find someone to help me get my files off of my old computer. It’s a shame, because I spent three or four days working on a great new historical feature for this site. I will add it soon, nevertheless.

Two Colorado Art Deco film theaters. First up, the Boulder Theater.

Originally built as an opera house in 1906, it was remodelled in
terra cotta Art Deco by Robert Boller in 1936.

The Boller Brothers were from Kansas City and built Art Deco theaters all over Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

The theater was turned into a concert hall in 1981, and great care
is taken to preserve this building.

Even though Boulder had a smoking ban long before the rest of the state, and because Boulder is a college town, the theater has a reputation that on concert nights there still seems to be some sort of smoke wafting around. ;<)

Next up, the Mayan Theatre in Denver.

The Mayan was also built in terra cotta Art Deco style, with a design by
Montana Fallis. It was slated to be demolished in the 1980s, but it was
rescued by preservationists and restored and reopened as an art theater in 1986.

Art Deco theater designers often revived historical cultures like the Egyptian and the Mayan. In fact Montana Fallis also designed the Egyptian Theatre in Delta, CO, two years prior to The Mayan.

Montana Fallis designed the Buerger Brothers Building one of Denver’s most famous Art Deco landmarks. I was going to link to my pictures of it, but I am shocked to see that I haven’t posted photos of it yet. I could have sworn I had. Look for that as the next post!

Fallis also designed the Oxford Hotel Annex in 1912, just north of the main building. While it is not Art Deco, it is clad in white terra cotta.

(click this picture)

Once again, I headed down to Capitol Hill in search of Art Deco.
Clicking on the pictures will enlarge them to better see details.

I don’t know when the The Washington was built, the angled brick in the windowsills should indicate post-war construction, but the entranceway seems right out of the late-1930s.

The Dorset House, built 1938, has great horizontal Streamline Modern elements contrasting with the vertical entranceway.

This radial corner entranceway is made of black marble and polished stainless steel.

I park my car and then hustle around The Hill on a longboard skateboard,
so if you see a foolish looking older guy trying not to break his neck
navigating cobblestone sidewalks, while trying to take photos, that’s me!

Here are some examples with similar stacked-brick entranceways.

The Cheesman Arms is listed on apartment websites as dating
from 1930, but that seems 15 years too early, maybe I’m wrong.

From this angle, you can see the rounded brick on the vertical columns.

Corona Manor

The Pearl Place Apartments has the classic three row accents,
expressed here in dark reddish-brown brick, typical of Streamline
Modern.

The same apartment listing website has Pearl Place Apartments listed as built in 1950, and that is probably 10-12 years too late for this building, in my opinion.

Classic asymmetrical Art Deco entranceway

The Parkaire

Similar use of red-brick horizontal banding and the three row accents of the Pearl Place Apartments, but with corner windows and a much more dramatic black marble entranceway with white stripes.

I would guess a late-1930s construction date. I notice the air conditioning units are located thoughtfully in the horizontal banding design!

The Galaxy. I am uncertain on the antiquity of this building
(I like the sign)

Unusual use of tile, also a nice asymetrical window design above the doorway.

An interesting vertical entranceway to a 50s-era apartment building
to finish this off this page. . .