People & Places

He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere! When Bill Gates came to town, who sat up front, looking more Microsofty than Gates himself? John Hickenlooper. When it’s time to pick a new architect for the Denver Art Museum, who will be putting his Beatlemania-coiffed head next to that of First Lady Wilma Webb? John Hickenlooper. Ever since the self-professed recovering geologist got involved with Denver’s first brewpub — the now venerable Wynkoop Brewing Company — he’s been a landmark on our local scene, albeit a rather peripatetic one. And with his latest crusade, Hickenlooper’s really standing tall: The Wynkoop is now serving as headquarters for the campaign to save the Mile High Stadium name, a fight armed not just with sentiment, but hard economic facts. Cheers!

And we’re talking a big party, too — a genuine blowout downtown, where Denver residents can dance in the streets instead of being tossed off of them by jackbooted cops, as they were during last year’s party-pooping December 31 crackdown. Hey, it wasn’t the real start to the millennium, anyway, city officials belatedly pointed out. So true. And now we’re expecting big things from Denver on December 31, 2000, starting with a downtown open house complete with entertainment and ending with fireworks at Coors Field. Any chance of that? Stay tuned, says mayoral spokesman Andrew Hudson: Wellington Webb will discuss this very topic during his annual State of the City speech in early July.

Readers’ choice: Multi-block party

When he was alive, cable mogul Bill Daniels was known for his generosity toward employees and colleagues alike, helping dozens of locals launch their own businesses. When he passed away earlier this year, Daniels left the bulk of his $1.4 billion estate to create a foundation that will become Colorado’s largest, giving out 5 percent of its assets every year. About 75 percent of the foundation’s annual donations will be made in Colorado, but Daniels didn’t forget our neighboring states: the other 25 percent is earmarked for Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico. Education and health care are expected to be priorities for the new Daniels Fund, and Coloradans should have reason to be grateful to Daniels for years to come.

Escuela Guadalupe is a small private endeavor developed under the wing of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, itself a cast-iron anchor in the midst of a community torn by poverty and struggle. The school debuted last year, catering only to students in kindergarten through grade two. But small isn’t necessarily problematic; in fact, it’s the escuela’s saving grace: Offering straightforward bilingual education in intimate, uncrowded classrooms with help from parents, who are required to volunteer a certain number of hours to the school annually, its goal is to challenge students without compromising their ability to learn. Next fall, the plan is to begin adding grades as the original student body matures, giving kids who might have been chewed up and spit out in the public schools a chance to excel all the way up to the eighth grade. ¡Viva la escuela!

Kids will be kids, and that’s the real beauty of this project: Fourth- and fifth-grade “history detectives” at Dora Moore School did all the legwork for the Women of the West Museum’s Denver Neighborhood Women’s History Trail project, the first link in what museum officials hope will one day become an interconnected trail through the West designed to acknowledge the oft-unrecognized historical and community-building contributions of strong and singular women. They did it with the kind of uncontainable enthusiasm and grace only a kid can muster, and the resulting brochure and tour proved both fun and fascinating.

At CU’s main library, you can absorb the works of Aristotle, Socrates, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Kant, Crumb, Trudeau and the Marquis de Sade by way of osmosis as you nap luxuriously in one of the many study cubicles or on the couches that have been conveniently interspersed throughout. There’s nothing more impressive to a smart gal or guy than someone lying there, drooling on himself with an open copy of Plato’s Republic draped across his chest. You can even nod off reading the New York Times or the Economist in the library’s periodicals room. If you’re lucky, your dreams will be filled with images of Alan Greenspan sitting George W. Bush Jr. on his knee and explaining the importance of the Federal Reserve.

Most people prefer to nod off in their own homes or offices, but then again, not every home or office has central air conditioning. So why not head over to the three-month homes/offices of our elected lawmakers? Take a seat in one of the big, comfy chairs in a basement committee meeting room, where the temperature stays at a moderate seventy degrees, put your head back, and do what the legislators do: Dream about getting something accomplished. As an added benefit, the droning of whatever distinguished gentleman or gentlewoman has the floor will knock you out like a lullaby. Sleep tight!

It’s fashionable in architecture to put up new buildings in styles that date back a hundred years. But many of these new old-timey buildings are too conservative to be visually interesting. Not so for the 1899 Wynkoop Building, which was developed by the Nichols Partnership and Loftus Development and designed by Sheers + Leese Associates and the Neenan Company. The particulars of the handsome neo-traditional building were worked out by Chris Sheers to complement its next-door neighbor, the beloved Ice House. With design oversight by the Colorado Historical Foundation, the bulk of the building — which according to zoning could have been a skyscraper — was downsized in a deal that allowed the developers to punch windows in the formerly windowless walls of the Ice House. The tradeoff was necessary because, surprisingly, the Ice House and nearby Union Station aren’t within the boundaries of the landmark district, like the rest of LoDo, and therefore not protected. In spite of this, the building fits in and is a lot better than what we might have expected.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, people were so excited by the development of the electric light that they found applications for it that we can hardly imagine today, like attaching bare lightbulbs to oak beams. One forgotten device was bathing a building’s facade in light after nightfall. When Silversmith Cohen began to rehab the old Chamber of Commerce building — which was designed by Denver architects Marean and Norton in 1909 — in order to turn it into the Chamber Apartments, they found, first in local history books, and then buried in the terra cotta on the building itself, a hidden indirect lighting system. But like the rest of the place, the wiring was decrepit. The system was refitted to state-of-the-art standards, and this spring, though the building itself isn’t finished, the electricity was turned on again. Now this old-fashioned light show is one of downtown’s brightest spots.

Cherry Creek has undergone relentless change in the last ten years, and although the neighborhood has never been more alive with shoppers and residents, the new buildings being thrown up to accommodate them are…not so alive. Among the ugly new additions, however, is an elite but ever-dwindling group of gorgeous older buildings that have long defined Cherry Creek as a center of urbane luxury. None of these is more beautiful or more impeccably maintained than the Ilona of Hungary building. Designed by the Denver architectural firm of Frank & Lundquist, the white building has a muscular frame of exposed structural members that elegantly contrasts with the delicately pierced sunscreens that shelter it. The suave 1970s confection communicates the dedication to beauty that is the chief pursuit at Ilona of Hungary, a European-style spa and a health- and beauty-aids manufacturer. The company was founded by George Meszaros, a world-renowned beauty consultant, and his wife, Ilona. The two were 1940s emigrés from Hungary who met in this country and moved to Denver in the 1960s for our then-clean air. Hopefully, the just-announced plan to renovate the building will do nothing to spoil its swank character.

I-70 commuters call it “the flying-saucer house” or “the Sleeper house,” after its cameo appearance in a Woody Allen movie, but architect Charles Deaton considered it a personal statement of freedom. The acquisition of Deaton’s masterpiece by software mogul John Huggins, after years of neglect by a previous owner, is good news for all lovers of non-Euclidean geometry. Huggins is investing the care and cash needed to finish the interior of the never-occupied house with the aid of Deaton’s designing daughter, Charlee. He’s also building an addition, following the plans drawn up by Deaton (who died a few years ago) and local architect Nicholas Antonopoulos of Praxis Design. When completed this summer, the result will be an incredible mountain retreat — and the unique vision of an important artist realized at last.

In 1992, despite its charming 1920s Italian Renaissance revival style, the venerable old Midland Building had been written off by everyone, including the city’s hardcore preservationists. Believe it or not, the high-rise wasn’t, at the time, considered to be historically valuable. The fact that it was designed by one of Denver’s greatest early-twentieth-century architectural firms, Fisher and Fisher, didn’t seem to matter, either. Luckily, the building’s developers, Corum Real Estate Group, skipped the possibility of a surface parking lot at the site and instead decided to take advantage of downtown’s boom times by turning the Midland Building into residential lofts. Now, as the redo moves toward completion, no one would doubt the building’s historic credentials or its value to downtown’s architectural diversity. One great challenge for the restoration architect, Paul Bergner (in consultation with David Owen Tryba), was the need to re-create the exterior massing and details of the first floor and mezzanine, which had been lost in a misguided 1970s rehab. The project reminds us that in historic preservation — as in baseball — it ain’t over till it’s over.

It was downright bizarre. Over the last decade, one LoDo building after another has been cleaned up and given renewed life. But until late last year, the neighborhood’s grand dame, the Sugar Building, and her Wazee Street consort, the Sugar Building Annex, stood right in the middle of this urban revival, empty and neglected. Both of these early-twentieth-century modernist buildings were designed by the distinguished Denver architectural firm of Gove and Walsh — which also did Union Station and the Ice House — and built as offices for the Great Western Sugar Company. Finally, a specially created corporation, Sugar Cubed LLC, stepped up last year. The restoration job it commissioned is fabulous and extremely light-handed. Credit for that goes to Josh Comfort, the Denver architect who let the beauty of the original buildings shine through. LoDo renovations are already old news, but thankfully, two of its best buildings didn’t miss out.

Readers’ choice: Forney Museum/REI

The widow of Bob Magness, legendary founder of cable company TCI, Sharon Magness is one society lady who’s concerned with more than just fashion shows and stuffy luncheons — though she seems to like those, too — and she’s become Denver’s go-to woman for those in need. While Magness is involved with many of the groups traditionally patronized by Denver’s elite, including the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, she also gave $250,000 to the campaign to replace the library at Columbine High School after the parents of the massacre victims asked the community for help, as well as millions to Volunteers of America, which works with the homeless, the elderly and the destitute. It’s this attention to the most vulnerable Denverites that sets Magness apart from the rest. Well, that and her tendency to arrive at black-tie dinners astride her Arabian horse Thunder, the Broncos’ mascot.

High-rises have been popping up like mushrooms in the past year, but instead of being downtown, most of them are in the suburbs, where it seems that every community is creating its own skyscraper park — just about all of which have been soaring successes. The first and foremost of these many decentralized central business districts is the Denver Tech Center and its adjacent developments in south Denver, Greenwood Village and Cherry Hills Village, where it has been the tradition to build high-style examples of cutting-edge contemporary architecture. The latest masterpiece to adorn the south corridor is the Hines Tower, a neo-modern sculptural triumph by Pickard Chilton Architects of New Haven, Connecticut. Made of polished metal and tinted glass that has been as carefully detailed as a piece of jewelry, the thirteen-story building was assembled in a complicated group of volumes and shapes that have been clustered and stacked. The shiny metal framework grid that envelops the curtain walls makes the building appear taller, because the position of the interior’s floors cannot be seen from the outside, as is typically done. Even among its handsome neighbors in and around the DTC, many of them visible from I-25, the sharp-looking Hines tower stands out.

Call it monstrous or magnificent, bombastic or beautiful. That the spanking-new Daniel L. Ritchie Center for Sports and Wellness at the University of Denver could elicit such a wide range of responses suggests the aesthetic power of the $70 million athletic facility. Designed by Denver architect Cabell Childress, with technical support from the Davis Partnership, the center opened last fall, but some finishing touches — like a gigantic ceramic tile mural by Maynard Tishler — are still being applied. The focal point of the whole thing is its impressive and overscaled gothic tower, which is surrounded by a dizzying array of rectilinear wings. But there’s also the inspired and mind-boggling abundance of expensive materials, like the two-tone sandstone and limestone on some of the exterior walls, the copper sheeting around the rest, or the gold leaf that has been generously applied to the tower’s conical roof. More than anything else, it was Childress’s ambitious vision and DU’s apparently very deep pockets that made the postmodern Ritchie Center the best of the many buildings that rose from the ground in Denver last year.

Readers’ choice: The Pepsi Center

Central Denver’s ongoing renaissance has finally caught up with Denver’s main street. Once a lively and attractive urban boulevard, East Colfax went into a tailspin in the 1960s, attracting a mix of porno theaters, bars and fast-food joints. Over the years, many people simply avoided the thoroughfare altogether, overlooking the fact that it still had several fine historic buildings as well as some of Denver’s funkiest retail stores. Now Colfax has turned the corner, and people are finally rediscovering the potential of downtown’s doorstep. More than a dozen buildings have recently been renovated, the Fillmore Auditorium brings in world-famous musicians, and loft and office conversions have delivered a jolt of energy. Let’s hope East Colfax can hang on to its offbeat spirit as the developers move in so that Denver will have a main street it can truly be proud of.

The wild card on Channel 2’s nutty new morning program, Dan Daru has become the loopiest a.m. performer since chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs was booted off the Today show. With his backward cap, manic delivery and energy enough to power New York City for the next hundred years, Daru, who’s married to the station’s nighttime anchor, Wendy Brockman, is blessedly unconcerned about embarrassing himself. And why not? After all, that’s his job.

She rocks!

He’ll give it to you straight.

The cut that adorns Kyle Dyer, who co-hosts Channel 9’s morning block, seems simple, but it’s deceptively complex. Her swingy, springy helmet of black hair represents a style midway between pixie and Prince Valiant that’s perfect for a woman on the move. You go, girl.

Readers’ choice: Aimee Sporer, Channel 4