Those Cheeseman Park apartment buildings being replaced by the Red Peak project are indeed old, but they aren’t especially architecturally unique or historically significant. Has anyone really taken a close look at them? They’re not particularly ornate – no more ornate than the “lackluster square box” taking their place in fact. In many ways, they’re the lackluster square boxes of their day.

Do they have some charm? Well, yes. Am I happy to see them go to make way for the added density and “urbanism” this Red Peak development will add? Honestly, I’m a bit torn, but we have to be reasonable here. In this day and age, this is a RARE example where a Denver developer is tearing down something viable as opposed replacing a parking lot or dilapidated old warehouse. We should be glad about that. But demolitions like this will still happen from time to time – even during times when the city is most vigilant about saving historic architecture – because it will HAVE to happen from time to time.

It’s really easy to lose your ass in real estate. REALLY easy. If I’m looking to risk tens of millions of dollars on a new development, I’m going to look closely at all my options and find the best location possible. I’m going to look for unfulfilled demand in the market. I’m certainly NOT just looking to fill the ugliest eyesore of a parking lot that annoys me on my ride to work every morning, or build a super awesome skyscraper to make our skyline look cooler, or any of that stuff we infill geeks fantasize about; I’m looking to make money. And if I determine that the perfect investment opportunity may exist at this very unique location next to the Botanic Gardens at Cheeseman Park, and that investment should be a large 156-unit building (for which the zoning appropriately allows) then obviously, due to the lack of vacant/parking lots in the immediate area, something will have to go. (And before anyone pounces: No, the small, Denver Botanic Gardens parking lot next door is not a viable option.)

I guess what I’m saying is: We have to be reasonable. There has to be some compromise. Think about it. If every old, remotely-historic building in Denver were to have been be saved, there would be no skyline of Cheeseman Park. In fact, there would be no skyline of downtown Denver. There would be no corporate offices in downtown Denver. There would be no jobs coming to downtown Denver. Practically every new, large, multifamily development, and every new office building large enough to be suitable for a corporate headquarters would be relegated to the edge of suburbia.

Is tearing down a magnificent piece of architecture with such historic significance as Denver’s first public school, to make way for a parking lot, a mistake? Obviously.

Is tearing down a typical, two-story, Capitol Hill apartment building to make way for added density at Cheeseman Park a mistake? That might be a different story. If these 11th Ave. apartment buildings are sacred, is there ANY structure built before 1940 in ALL of Capitol Hill/Uptown that ISN’T sacred? Where does preservation of historic character end and NIMBY-ism begin?

I’m sure they built the Fed building “for the ages.” I’m no engineer, nor an architect, but given the client, it had to have been built to very high standards, probably higher than most spec office buildings.

Given its size and architectural presence (love it or hate it, it has a definite presence), I think the Fed’s shell would make for a great department store. Of course the economics of that industry aren’t going to lend themselves to an expensive remodel, unless it’s a higher-end chain like Nordstrom. And given the proximity of Cherry Creek, it’s hard to imagine either they or Macy’s would be interested in the site. Fantasy is fun, but for now we just have to wait and see what develops.

This kicked historic preservation into high gear where I live. However, it shifted in odd directions, as wooden houses with bad foundations and heavy rot have been preserved; while it has remained hard to preserve the high-quality masonry buildings, which are much more worthwhile to preserve.

I have a rule of thumb about preserving buildings, which most people don’t apply. First check if the building is structurally worth preserving.

Now, there are exceptions; Seattle decided to preserve King Street Station, which really wasn’t structurally worth preserving, and has essentially rebuilt the entire structure; it’s more of a reconstruction than a preservation. In that case, the city’s lone surviving train station, it might be worth it.

But in general, keep the buildings with good bones. The ones which have serious, major structural problems or foundation failures; the wooden buildings which are riddled with dry rot; these are the ones to demolish.

I don’t know whether the Fed building has good bones or not. Do you?

The 50s featured a great deal of substandard construction — stuff which just falls apart on its own — and I really can’t justify preserving that. We lost a number of well-loved 50s-era (and early 60s) buildings in my locality because they were just junk, and started falling apart despite maintenance. They weren’t nice enough to be worth the reconstruction work.

The really horrifying thing about the building bulldozing in the 1950s is that they went after really solid, really good buildings and replaced them with parking lots or cheap junk.

If you look carefully at photos from the 19th century, there were a lot of tarpaper shacks and junky tin-roofed warehouses — but those had already fallen apart and been demolished in the 1910s, 20s, or 30s. The 50s started tearing down the *good* 19th century buildings.

Having read most of the newspaper articles related to the original construction of the “new” Federal Reserve building, I can’t help but think that it has now outlived its usefulness for the bank. The bank moved from their old home on 17th to the new one because the volume of checks they were processing on a daily basis-in that tiny building-was just too much, and they needed room. In those days, most people wrote several checks every week, but who writes that many checks now? I know they have other functions housed in that building, but it would seem that at least that function that required so much room must have shriveled to the point where they don’t need that room. Move the Fed, I say!

Your analysis is spot on. I have interviewed folks who were around in the 1950s about what was going on in Denver and the response is commonly, “We just didn’t really think about it”. This came from one woman who attended the Windsor Hotel’s final New Year’s celebration party as 1959 turned into 1960. She knew the hotel was coming down and loved the building, but there was really no upswell to secure saving it. Same thing occurred with the Tabor Grand Opera House which came down in 1965. If it had just been able to hold on for five more years, we might be looking at this most magnificent of structures at 16th and Curtis instead of the Federal Reserve Branch Bank. Interestingly enough, it was the Federal Reserve Bank, at 17th and Arapahoe (its old location), that needed the parking lot that necessitated the destruction of the Club Building in 1955.