I took advantage of the sun of Saturday morning to head to Capitol
Hill in Denver in search of Art Deco. The Hill and surrounding areas
have many apartment buildings displaying mixtures of Art Deco,
Streamline Moderne and International Styles.

This beautifully landscaped entry way is from The Harwood, a building
actually further west in the area near the University of Colorado Hospital.

First I headed over to the famous Poet’s Row, a historic district with eleven uniquely styled, 3-story apartment buildings. This outstanding structure is the Mark Twain apartment building. It was built in 1938 by Denver architect Charles Strong.

Charles Strong worked for Harry Edbrooke between 1923 and 1926, before starting his own practice in 1927. He designed many buildings throughout Denver and other cities, and his style progressed from Art Deco and Art Moderne through the International style to the 1957 glass and aluminum, Mesian-style Denver Petroleum Building downtown, which has been significantly altered recently in a less than sympathetic manner.

I plan on doing more research into the many important designs of Charles Strong, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that he did the 1949 Aurora Fox Theater and the 1950 Mayfair Shopping Center on 13th!

The Mark Twain is one of two buildings on Poet’s Row to feature Streamline Moderne rounded corners. Here you can see that one bay of the building projects slightly further than the other, with the windows of this second bay recessing slightly for emphasis.

Poet’s Row

Poet’s Row on Sherman Street, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. The Capitol is just a short walk down the street.

These modern urban apartment buildings were built between 1929 and 1956, and most were by Charles Strong. They are the first buildings ever constructed on the site, before that, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show once camped on the land in 1898!

The Mark Twain building features this unique off-center entryway
with alternating yellow and dark brick rounded panels. In this closeup,
you can appreciate the Art Deco lettering. Centered above the
entranceway is a stepped brick spire.

The Sherman Arms, constructed 1950, most likely a Charles Strong design.
It is interesting that even as late as 1950, the designs still make extensive use of vertical glass brick.

The angled brick windowsills of the Sherman Arms are typical of post-World War II construction. (if you click any of the photos on my site, you can see larger versions)

The Nathaniel Hawthorne designed 1938 by Charles Strong.

The Nathanial Hawthorne is the other Poet’s Row apartment building
using Moderne rounded corners.

The Art Deco entranceway of the Nathanial Hawthorne gives the
impression of a movie theater marquee.

This is the Eugene Field apartment building, designed 1939 by
Charles Strong.

The glass brick entranceway of the Eugene Field building is connected
to the roof with a stepped black spire.

The Eugene Field does not feature rounded corners and seems to be progressing toward the International style, as does the apartment building below.

The Panama Apartments, designed by Charles Strong, 1942. While the design is still sympathetic to the other Strong designs on the street, the simplification seems to lean toward the International style of architecture.

Poet’s Row and glass brick seem to go hand in hand. . .

As you head down Sherman Street from Poet’s Row to the Capitol, you come upon this grand example of Streamline Modern, the Colorado State Capitol Annex Building from 1939.

This building was a collaborative design by the Associated Architects for the State Capitol Annex, presided over by renowned Denver architect George Meredith Musick.

Then I headed over to Colorado Boulevard, in the neighborhood of the University of Denver Hospital where there are many interesting apartment buildings. I don’t know the name of this International style apartment building at 1100 Colorado.

I like the clean horizontal lines and the mixture of blonde and slightly pink brick (or is it tile?). The buildings corners are rounded, as are the recesses for the windows.

The entranceway features Moderne rounded corners and Art Deco
glass brick. I would assume this building is from the 1940s.

This entraceway to the South Hall on Colorado Blvd. features
vertical Art Deco glass brick, and nice black iron lettering.

Once again, the angled brick windowsills date this building to post-World War II.

And finally The Capri apartments on Colorado Boulevard. A beautiful post-World War II building that still features Art Deco elements.

Well, I ran out of sunshine by the afternoon, and so had to conclude my
Denver Art Deco search for the time being!

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.

Still a little pressed for time lately, been working long hours and weekends. I do keep updating other portions of this site as well, like this music section. I also plan on adding many things to the Odd Not Mod section, but it hasn’t happened yet.

After all, this is *Modeling Mid-Century Modern*

Sorry all, I have been working longer hours lately, so haven’t had as much time to get stuff together, so here are some more links I think you will enjoy. . .

» First off, Gaudi’s House of Bones!

» Always a favorite for me. . . 50 Strange Buildings of the World

» And another fave of mine, 24 Ghost Towns and Abandoned Cities. I am a sucker for bleak photos of ghost towns.

» Check out this photo of an interesting art installation by Doris Salcedo.

» Presenting the Hearst Building, the first green building in New York City.

» TWA terminal by Eero Saarinen during construction, 1961

» The Capitol Records Tower by Welton Beckett being held up by
Tennessee Ernie Ford!

» Three cool Coney Island photos from the 40s.

» Great 50s-era rooftop shot of a Motel in Venice, Florida

» And finally, a beautiful overhead shot of New York City from the 1930s

And. . . not that I expect everyone to find this interesting. . . but, since I am also a movie and music nut, I have a couple of pages where I list what films I watch, and what music I listen to, mostly so I can point friends to these pages without having to rely on my memory

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.

This office building has that futuristic look from the late-’60s-early ’70s, the era when traveling to the moon became a reality.