Apr. 08, 2006 - 18:56 MDT

SPRING BREAK

Spring comes to my spirit first, to my bones a bit later, but in my heart it is always spring and fluctuating hope as well.

Along with spring come the memories of warmer weather pursuits, such as walking, especially walking in the park and looking at nature blooming because of the skills of the park gardeners.

But there are also memories of being able to ride the streetcar downtown in shirt sleeves, walking through the dime stores, (there were three here, Woolworth's, Kresses, and Neisners all in a row on 16th Street), going to the Greeks for ice cream and buying candy there to take to the movies, going to the tobacco store and buying Murad (Egyptian Cigarettes) and Black Jack chewing gum.

And that was just the beginning.

What spurred me into this bit is an article by Tom Noel, Dr. Colorado who has a vast knowledge of Colorado and Denver from the beginning, of course he is not that old but has researched much that happened before he made the scene.

Herewith is his column of today in the Rocky Mountain News:

DRINKING IN DENVER CULTURAL HISTORY

"Sometimes blindfolded, sometimes with a wheelbarrow, Mademoiselle Carolista walked a tightrope from the stage to a balcony in back of the Criterion Saloon on Larmier Street. A harpist played and a balloon peddler worked the large crowds come to see the Denver's pioneer performing artist."

"Carolista's peak perfomance came on July 15, 1861, when she made her famous tightrope walk across Larimer Street as hundreds gaped from below."

"Other performers also worked in taverns. The Diana Saloon featured a stone swallower, and his more voracious companion, a sword eater. The Blake Street Bowling Alley billed itself as Denver's "ne plus ultra of popular resorts" with live music, good lunches, and a bar with "everything." Above and beyond all this, "Professor Wilson starred in a nightly trapeze performance."

"Denver's first theater, Apollo Hall, lay above a Larimer Street saloon. The multi-purpose second floor hall was converted to a theater by proprietor Libeus Barney. Of Denver's first theater show, he wrote home to Bennington, V., Oct. 4, 1859:"

"Last night was ushered in an event of paramount interest to Pike's Peakers Mr. Charles Thorne, the far-famed itinerant theatrical showman, with a company of six males and five females, made their debut at Apollo Hall, before a large, though not very select audience. Admittance, one dollar, comfortable accomodations for 350; receipts $400, which tells well for the patronage of art in this semi-barbarous region."

"Denver's early theater was marred, according to Jerome Smiley's 1901 History of Denver, by fans asking their favorite performers to join them for a celebratory drink after each act. This common custom, as Smiley put it, "often resulted in lowering the standard of artistic effects in the closing scenes of the drama. However, the ability of the audience to discriminate was usually befuddled itself after between-acts adjournments to the regions below."

"Performance in the Palace Theatre, at 15th and Blake Streets, were appraised by a Rocky Mountain News critic as "mostly leg art," Central City, taking a more high brow approach, hosted Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in its National Theater in 1862. Further underlining Central City's high theatrical aspirations, the Shakespeare Saloon opened across the street from the National Theatre that summer."

"Major league performing arts came to Denver in 1861 with the opening of the Tabor Grand Opera House. The grandest edifice ever built in Denver, its location at 16th and Curtis streets transformed that location into Denver's theater district."

"More than a dozen other theaters subsequently sprouted up all on Curtis. By 1900, it had become Denver's answer to Broadway's Geat White Way. All are gone now, but are commemorated by the Denver Prforming Arts Center location on Curtis Street, DPAC now boasts the Ellie Caulkins Opera House (almost as grand as the Tabor Grand Opera House), The Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre, the Gardner Galleria and the various stages of the Denver Center Theater Company."

"That dream started one day in 1972, when Donald Seawell, CEO of The Denver Post, was walking back to work after lunch. At that time, the Denver Urban Renewal Authority was demolishing what was left of the Curtis Street theaters. Mayor Speer's once gradiose auditorium looked forlorn amid a rising tide of skid row bars and flophouses."

"I sat down on the curb, pulled out a pen, sketched the plan for the DCPA on the back of an envelope, returned to the Post and created the DCPA as a legal entity that afternoon, Seawell recalls."

"With the collaboration of the Helen G. Bonfils Foundation, the city and many others, Denver built an arts complex that helped rejuvenate downtown and the perorming arts in a city where they had almost fallen off the tightrope."

+++++++++++++++

Mr. Tom Noel brought me from the old days to the present in a rather painless way today, stirring memories of days gone past, and things that ensued.

The Tabor Grand Opera House became a movie theater, I used to ride downtown on the streetcar and go see what was playing there at the moment. That reminds me that in those days one went to the ticket booth, bought tickets, went in and found a seat. If it was the middle of the picture a person would just stay on and see the beginning on the next showing.

I usually made it downtown on a Saturday morning early enough to participate in my minor exploration of Denver's places and was able to find my way in the Tabor Theater building that I probably shouldn't have been, much of the old decor was still in pretty good shape, it was fun to wander.

A number of years later I worked for the American Furniture Company on 16th and Lawrence Streets, the store was in an old theater, the salesmen hung out in the old orchestra pit, behind a line of huge Governor Winthrop desks topped with bookcases. Across Lawrence Street was Daniels and Fisher's department store, one of the classiest in town and huge, it was. The building itself took up a whole block and had the clock tower that is the only thing left standing now. The building across the alley was the old Nassau Building another of H.A.W. Tabor's buildings from the Gold Rush days of his prosperity. The store had built passage ways across the alleyway into the Nassau Building on the second and third stories and had furniture on display there too. Cushman maple furniture had its own nook there.

There was a stairway down to the main floor that was barred off on the ground floor but I used to pick the lock on the second floor and roam the stairs, picking up and looking at cigar bands and such detritus still existing from the old days.

Curtis Street from 16th toward 17th still had movie theaters there when I was a kid, by then sort of a theatrical skid row where movies were shown that supposedly one had to be at least 18 to enter . . . . we usually manged to get in one way or another, sometimes by use of back door tickets (an older guy would let us in). Even at that late date the street was a blaze of incandescent brilliance, included were cheap jack stores in that mix too.

If I remember correctly, Bauer's had a place between 15 and 16th streets on Curtis, that was even then a high-class place for dessert type foods. I think Otto Bauer is the one who invented the ice cream soda. A door or two away was the Rialto Theater which was a cut above the theaters the other side of Sixteenth.

As I got a little older, usually I would go to town a bit later or just go early and stay until after dark. When I would come out of the theater the downtown streets would be lit and the electric signs would scramble the scene. I would walk by the store windows which would be nicely lit and have manequins wearing the latest styles. Gano-Downs a men's store had the neatest show windows in town I think, the plate glass was curved from above back into the store and what was on display was easily visible regardless of whatever direction the ambient light arrived.

Of course Christmas time there were additional decorations hung from lampposts, etc. as well as lights too. Added to the aura of happiness, it did.

H. A. W. Tabor was the husband of Baby Doe Tabor who lived the rest of her life at the Matchless Mine up in our mountain in poverty as his widow.

As I wrote this my mind and heart roamed the downtown area of Denver as it was when I was wet-eared and wide-eyed. Down Fifteenth Street past the old Arapahoe County Courthouse for one thing. Remembering that I had once read that originally Denver was in the County of Arapahoe until it became its own city and county entity. And then up and down 16th Street where the good theaters were. Stopping at the old Denver Theater that had one of those very big theater organs which would be played until a very late date -- long after I quit going there. I remember a pang in my chest as I walked by one day and saw part of the demolition of that grand building.

Remembering passing by the old Albany Hotel on 17th Street -- an establishment that I also saw in demolition stage, the Shirley Savoy Hotel up on Broadway, the Cosmopolitan Hotel also on Broadway.

Sadly, about the only beautiful old building in the downtown district is Trinity Church on Broadway, that was buit way back when, of stone which still has some very amazing interior woodwork.

So, I grew as well as Denver, not sure if either one of us grew gracefully, but time passed, old town was passed by and me still hanging on tooth and nail.

The sap rises in the trees and this sap is on SPRING BREAK . . . . . . . . . . . .

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