This incredible modern office building was designed in 1964 by William Muchow Associates Architects. This was originally a bank, the Silverstate Savings and Loan.
William Muchow is one of Denver’s most important historical architects. His firm designed 833 buildings from 1950 to 1991!
His firm designed one of Denver’s better examples of the International style architecture, the Texaco Building at 1570 Grant, which is just north of this location.
One of my favorite buildings his firm constructed is the Engineering Sciences Center located on the campus of the University of Colorado in Boulder. I plan on posting pictures of this fantastic building real soon!
Thanks for visiting! I have been a little slack lately as I have been working on other things and trying to organize a bit. I plan on posting much more frequently in the next month, so check back often!
The Van Hummell Building, designed 1951 by Edwin Francis.
A beautiful multi-faceted red standstone building right off of Speer Blvd. in Denver. It is now the American Red Cross building.
Edwin Francis also designed the stone Crest House sitting atop Mt. Evans in Evergreen, CO. The Crest House is currently in ruins, but there has been talk about restoration.
I had to make more than a few passes by this building to get lighting that I wanted, as the design is intended for the shadows to change drastically throughout the day.
The Mullen Home for Nurses was built in 1936, designed by
the great Temple Buell. It is a strong vertically oriented Art Deco design.
It is similar to two other surviving Art Deco masterpieces Buell also designed, the Horace Mann High School, which also has similar brickwork. . .
. . .and the other is The Paramount Theatre, where decorative elements are created from terracotta, instead of brick.
Click on this photo above and look at the brickwork. How do you design that on paper? How do you communicate those designs to the bricklayer?
And this entry way below. . . it is just staggering.
Mullen Home for Nurses
This butterfly roof office building is most likely from the 1950s. The perspective of this building looks completely different when looked from the front or back. From the front, the rear of the building does not seem very high.
In this second shot you can see that the eave actually narrows as it heads toward the rib of the two roof sections, adding to the drama of the soaring height of the rear of this building.
If you are a Denver resident, you probably drive by this building all the time, but you would have had to carefully catch it out of the corner of your eye as you fly by on 18th Ave!
Usonian is the name applied by Frank Lloyd Wright to the architectural style he developed in the 1930s. It was intended to be a new vernacular U.S. style aimed at a futuristic utopia, hence US-onia. The other variant modernist style for the time period is called International style.
It is an outstanding example of a Usonian office building, the jutting eaves, the floor to ceiling windows, the garden, the clerestory windows. . .
This structure bears a strong resemblance to Victor Hornbein’s Usonian design, the Ross-Broadway Library from 1951. I have never seen this office building listed as a Hornbein design, but I at least assume it is from the same time period.
One-of-a-kind McDonalds in downtown-Denver. This building was obviously repurposed from another use. If you know, can you leave a comment?
Or even guess, if you like?
Inside, McDonalds did not take advantage of the high ceiling and the windows that go with it, but clearly, there is no other McDonalds that looks like this!
Vertical panelled walls that extend maybe 20 feet high topped with
6 foot high windows and an accordion-fold roof. With a row of basement
windows below. The scale seems gloriously oversized.
What was this place originally? Help me out, Denverites!
The Mile High Tower, the last remainder of world renowned master
architect I.M. Pei’s 1956 creation, the Mile High Center. The glass
and metal design is in a style referred to as Miesian, from the name of
architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Mile High Tower formerly opened to a plaza on the east side, which
included a pool covered with a hyperbolic arch. The plaza is gone
and now the building seems lost as part of the Norwest Plaza.
Another famous Colorado loss of I.M. Pei design was the hyperbolic paraboloid roof of the pavilion at Zeckendorf Plaza (now Adam’s Mark Hotel).
Some of I.M. Pei’s work in Colorado survives, such as the 16th Street Mall in Denver and the outstanding N.C.A.R. building in Boulder.
The photo above shows the Amoco Tower reflected in the glass.
The black and white aluminum panels interweave to form a unique
pattern. Lights pointing upward highlight the verticals.
Denver’s Botanic Garden’s, the city’s most well-known set of Usonian structures.
The Boettcher Memorial Conservatory, 1966 by Victor Hornbein and Ed White Jr. This amazing plexiglass and concrete ribbed building is 51 feet high engineering marvel built on the principle of the inverted catenary curve!
The master plan for the gardens was layed out by landscape architect Garrett Eckbo and now features over 30 themed gardens by world famed garden designers.
These distinctive light concrete light fixtures made an appearance in Woody Allen’s science fiction film Sleeper, from 1973.
Victor Hornbein included many abstracted floral designs in his building, including these in the entry to the Memorial Conservatory.
The organic poured concrete designs continue through to the interior, which is lit with indirecting lighting.
More floral abstracts of stained glass and wood. . .
A beautiful interior fountain of the same unified organic design of poured concrete and pink block.
The Ross-Broadway Library, Usonian design by Victor Hornbein, 1951
Victor Hornbein was Denver’s premiere Usonian architect
It is unusual to see Usonian-style libraries. This one was designed very much in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright.
This library was saved from destruction by dedicated preservationists
The designs for the window framework are fascinating, the doors have similar designs.
Eaves painted white. . .
Hornbein’s most famous surviving work is Denver’s Botanical Gardens
Outstanding 1970 design by Boulder architect Charles Haertling
Haertling did very few buildings in Denver, yet did 20 or 30 in Boulder
Many Boulder-ites attribute his Boulder buildings to Frank Lloyd Wright, but there are no Wright buildings in the state. None. Trust me. Anyone that tells you otherwise is mistaken.
I was in the nieghborhood last weekend and was alarmed to see that the new owner was constructing a fence on the property, obstructing the views seen in the photos above.
But. . . the severity of the fence fits perfectly with the “brutalist” style of the original design, so kudos to the new owner, job well done!
