Jul. 20, 2005 - 21:24 MDT

BACK THEN

Got to thinking this evening of summer times and going to the main Denver Public Library in Civic Center Denver. A library from 1910 to 1956 partially paid for by a Carnegie Grant - that library had the first open shelves in the United States, Google tells me.

It was a very imposing building of stone, several stories high and the stacks, oh the stacks towered all around -- several stories worth of them. It was a treat made better by my love of the neighborhood library Sarah Platt Decker, in its own little park several blocks from where I grew up.

My meager spending money was not all spent on riotus high life, sometimes just riding to town and inhabiting the grand library. Nice and clean, good shoes (shined) and manners to taste too I would spend more time looking through books, reading a bit here and there and finding an interesting one perhaps spending the rest of the available time reading that one book.

Civic Center itself is one grand place to boot. On the west is the City and County Building (opened in 1932) just about the time I began my rides to town alone. Such a grand edifice it is even today. On the east is our Golden Domed State Capitol. Covered with gold leaf, periodcally renewed/refurbished when needed. Another grand rock building. The capitol sits above Civic Center on a slight rise, which adds to its grandeur. It was built in the 1890's and on the front steps is one step with a brass plate stating that that spot is one mile above sea level -- thus Denver The Mile High City. From the Capitol steps a view of the Rocky Mountains is evident even today.

Civic Center takes up the space between the City and County Building and the Capitol. Spacious and about two city blocks wide at its widest part.

Around 1920 Mayor Robert Speer finally got action on the idea of a Civic Center and the money to do it. Lots of open space, grassy and well kept with trees here and there. On the south end is the Greek Theater and Collonade. A space that through the years has seen use as a theater and place for public ceremonies and then later a hangout for bums and grifters as well. At the north end of Civic Center is the Voohies Memorial (a grand collonade of its own) embracing the seal pond. It is in that spot I remember one winter seeing reindeer corralled during the Christmas Season.

So by the time I was navigating on my own via streetcar it was par for the course for me to visit the Greek Theater and collonade and the Voorheis Memorial on the way to the Library. A time, it was, that I felt to be a citizen of the world when I went there.

Then when I was a child they began the custom of lighting the City and County building with colored lights for Christmas which were kept lit through the Stock Show after the first of the year. So, on the way home from my cousins we would go by Civic Center at least once in each season and have a look-see at the lights, creeping bumper to bumper past the front of the building.

Although Denver had the reputation of being a "cow town," it was always a "ritzy cow town," to my way of looking at it.

Mayor Speer was the man who lined Cherry Creek through town with trees and a boulevard as well as being the father of many other parks in the area. Denver Mountain Parks was his baby too.

Among my souvenirs of childhood are visits to that area BACK THEN . . . . . . . . .

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