One last curtain-wall building photo from downtown…
The famous MiesianMile High Tower, part of the Mile High
Plaza designed 1956 by I.M. Pei and Henry Cobb. The plaza
is now incorporated into Philip Johnson’s Norwest Plaza.
Another Formalist high-rise with glass-curtain walls by Raymond
Harry Ervin, built 1962. Originally there were large “W”s on each
side of the rooftop box.
The Harry Huffman Mansion, designed 1938 by Raymond Harry Ervin. A mix of Art Deco and Streamline Modern, it was designed to mimic the mansion from Frank Capra’s film, Lost Horizon.
Lost Horizon (1937)
Ervin’s design may even be superior to the original!
The mysterious Dean Reed, “The Red Elvis”, motorcycles through Moscow.
Denver-born Dean Reed graduated Wheatridge High in 1956.
In 1958 he took off for Hollywood, but suddenly became a huge star in South American
countries Chili, Peru & Argentina, where he heavily embraced Marxism!
He later moved to Europe where he became a socialist singing sensation in the U.S.S.R.
and East Germany. He became fluent in Spanish, German and Russian!
Reed’s body was discovered in a lake outside near Berlin in 1986. There is still
speculation on his cause of death. Was he murdered by the Russians, the Germans,
maybe even the Americans, or is was it suicide?
Reed is buried in Green Mountain Cemetary in Boulder.
Dean Reed was also a TV star and an actor, starring in many spaghetti westerns
like Adios Sabata and this odd film below:
Otto Kuhler was one of the world’s most famous industrial designers, well known for his Streamline Modern locomotives from the 1930s.
In 1967 he illustrated plans for a monorail system for Denver that was never built.
In most places the monorail would be suspended above existing rail lines, though it is riding through downtown in this drawing. (That seems to be I.M. Pei’s Mile High Tower in the background, though the Brown Palace across the street, seems to have been left out.)
Kuhler seems to have retained much of his 1930s/40s Streamline design in these 1967 illustrations. (I believe that is supposed to be Cherry Creek in the drawing above)
Sign for The Cyclone rollercoaster at Lakeside Amusement Park. The rollercoaster and sign were built 1940, the Art Deco design was by Richard Crowther.
This Usonian roof feature with a tree piercing the roofline is from the Spivak House in Arapahoe Acres in Englewood. Designed 1955 by Ed Hawkins and Joseph Dion
(I presume)