Another building from the former University of Colorado medical campus to meet the wrecking ball soon, the Colorado Department of Health Center building, designed by Eugene Sternberg, I believe in the late-’50s.

This building is a classic example of International-style, as opposed to the Usonian-style of the previous post. In some ways it reminds me of the Texaco Building on Grant.

Eugene Sternberg is well known for his contribution to Arapahoe Acres, and his many social mind designs for hospitals and schools, such as the Arapahoe Community College building.

Wonderful light fixture design

Boomerang benchs

It’s been clear for quite awhile that this building is going to be tore down, they have been letting it fall into disrepair.

It’s too bad they could bring themselves to repurpose these medical campus buildings.

Children’s Psychiatric Day Care Center in Denver built 1962.

Designed by Denver’s foremost Usonian-style architects, Victor Hornbein and Ed White.

This day care center bears a striking resemblance to Hornbein and White’s Usonian design for the Denver Botanical Gardens.

Usonian is a style associated with Frank Lloyd Wright. Here you can see that the scaling is similar to a Wright design, perfect for children!

The two buildings in this post are among the many buildings on the former University of Colorado medical campus that are slated for destruction.

The Denver Landmark Preservation Commission approved landmarking status, but, sadly, the Denver City Council did not.

This is a shame. Usonian structures are often torn down before their historical importance is understood.

The Usonian concept was an ambitious effort to construct utopian structures in the United States. It was a way of building the future now.

Usonian was the contrasting U.S. style to the more European International-style.

International-style is usually undecorated, while Usonian buildings do not have this limitation.

And while Usonian is a predominantly U.S. style, you still see more International-style buildings in the United States, making the preservation of Usonian structures that much more important.

This is the neighboring Usonian structure, the John F. Kennedy Childhood Development Center, also designed by Victor Hornbein and Ed White, in 1968.

Since the structures are no longer used, they give off a ghostly vibe that constrasts with the vibrant architecture.

Great day at Bandimere Speedway this year for the 2009 Hot Rod Happening.

They bring out old dragsters and inlines as well!

12

18

24

First of three long pages of a great morning at Bandimere Speedway in Morrison, CO, fortunately 10 minutes from where I live.

I am going to let the pictures do the talking! This page is ’50s-’70s. The next two posts will be much older hot rods!

And I recently did the Facebook thing

Pete’s Satire Lounge sign on Colfax has fresh paint on it.

They rehabbed the interior as well. They redecorated in a similar
fashion to Pete’s Greek Town Cafe.

The Satire is famous for the earliest parts of the careers of the
Smothers Brothers, Judy Collins and Bob Dylan.

I’ve drawn the beautiful Satire sign in 3D before, click and see.

West Colfax Drive-In sign illustration

Built 1967. Once located where the Westland Shopping Center is now.

I really couldn’t tell the colors from the black & white source photo, so I went with the McDonald’s color theme. A nice, simple Googie design.

Google SketchUp

Drive-in film theaters are mostly long gone from the U.S. landscape and Colorado is no exception.

This beautifully restored marquee for the Holiday Drive-in is in North Boulder. It is one of the only surviving drive-in marquees in the Boulder-Denver area.

It is great that this sign was preserved, since much of Boulder’s Googie-signage was torn down before it was understood that many people may value this architectural style.

Now onto some ads from Denver’s past. . .

A wild double-feature from 1963, apparently screened in horrifying Nervo-Rama, Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory, and Boris Karloff in Corridors of Blood.

This was showing at the Centennial Drive-In which was in Littleton at Federal & Belleview, the Lakeshore Drive-In located out by Sloan’s Lake in Edgewater, and the Westwood theater out on W. Alameda (nowadays an x-rated film theater and wedding hall, believe it or not!)

The Lakeshore Drive-In would play movies til dawn in 1964! I’ll tell ya, these days they don’t make cars comfortable enough for folks to sit through 5 movies in one night!

Another great double-feature including The Girl in Black Stockings featuring blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren! This was playing in 1957 at the West Drive-In (where the empty lot, with speaker poles, still remains alongside 6th Avenue) and the Monoco Drive-In which was way out in industrial north Denver at Monoco and 40th, just a little south of I-70.

Mamie returns to the Monoco and West drive-ins with Guns, Girls and Gangsters. Double-billed with B-movie director Ed Cahn’s other 1959 feature, Riot In Juvenile Prison.

Released in mesmerising Hypno-Vista, the Paramount Theatre showed Horrors of the Black Museum and The Headless Ghost in 1959. Hypno-Vision was actually just a short filmed introduction by a hypnotist! If you look closely, you can see that they were even screening a midnite showing of the great Bela Lugosi film from the ’30s, I Walked With a Zombie.

The Paramount Theatre is the only surviving film theater from old downtown Denver. It is an art deco masterpiece, take a look.

More drive-in fare with the 1957 flying saucer paranoia of Unidentified Flying Objects and Enemy From Space, playing at the North Drive-In (which was on N. Federal, just south of the 36) and the South Drive-In, once located on Belleview, east of Sante Fe.

And lastly, Japanese men in rubber suits battle it out in 1963’s King Kong vs Godzilla. This played at the RKO Orpheum, one of downtown Denver’s many lost film palaces that were located in the vincinity of 16th and Welton.

And one final item, this picture I found of a marquee for a theater that I cannot find a listing for, the West Colfax Drive-In from 1967. Where was it? I want to know! Please write.

Reader submission: This time *I* did not take the photos, but these were submitted by architect Peter Carey of Carey Design in Boulder. He is on the historic preservation board in Longmont where they are identifying potential mid-century modern homes for preservation.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw these gorgeous photos. I did not know of specific homes in Longmont, but knew that there must be mid-century modern homes up that way, as my wife Shannon Stanbro of 5280mod, never ceases to surprise me when she shows me mod homes in cities like Gunbarrel, Broomfield, Westminster and many of the “L” towns surrounding Boulder.

This first amazing Usonian house was designed in 1968 by Roger Easton for Edward Lehman, the owner of the Longmont Times Call local newspaper. It is 5000 sq ft! Roger Easton also designed this office building in Boulder.

This unique Longmont home from 1964 was built in an enclosed court yard. I love that entranceway.

Across the street is another mod home from 1972 with this cool pass-through car port.

A beautiful Usonian design from 1957.

This is Peter Carey’s own house, built for the esteemed Longmont Dickens family in 1952, one of the first houses on the Sunset Golf Course. Look at those 30″ eves and 14′ wide plate glass windows. This home has a pinwheel floorpan.

And finally, Longmont High School, an outstanding modern design from 1962 with a unique version of the folded plate roof. This last picture reminds me of Sarasota High School.

If you were following along at all during the weekend, I was posting incomplete versions of this drawing as I was working on it, just for fun. This is a Google SketchUp 3D illustration of a ’50s-era Automart Grocery Store, with a hyperbolic curved roof.

I love to illustrate and since it is on target with the same subject matter as the rest of this site, I feel it is appropriate. Click on the illustrations to make them larger.

I “eyeball” all of the dimensions for my drawings, so there are sometimes minor things that are inaccurate. I reserve the right to call this “artistic license”.

Thanks for visiting Modeling Mid-Century Modern!