Search Results for "milo ketchum"
Bye Bye Fan Fair
Aurora set to purchase, demolish blighted Fanfare building
Another Googie-style building coming down, this time Fan Fair Discount City, a department store from 1961 in Aurora.
This was a blighted area for 20 years, so this is far less of a loss than the Armet & Davis White Spot from the previous post.
I assume this will not be an easy tear-down due to asbestos and the strong thin-shell concrete construction of engineer Milo Ketchum, the same method used to create the hyperbolic parabaloids of the May D&F Plaza and the International Center at The Broadmoor or Hanger 61, the historic structure at old Stapleton.
November 21st, 2012 / No Comments » / by Tom Lundin
1959 & 1963 Denver ads
Get a color TV at Downing’s! The first was at 33rd & Downing.
Color television was around in primitive form since 1953, but didn’t really take off until this year, 1963 (ads in this posting are from 1963, unless stated otherwise). By 1965 it became almost mandatory, as most networks started broadcasting most of their new programs in color.
This 1959 ad shows Downing’s was around since 1922!
Or maybe you need your television combined with your radio and record player as in this unit from Denver Dry Goods? (1959 ad)
Earl Muntz TV Center of Denver. Now this location is part of the Hi-Dive! (1959 ad)
Penney’s Downtown
Woolworth’s Downtown. These 1963 Christmas ads are from November (of course!)
Norman’s! I wish I had a photo handy, but this is that really cool, pitched-roof mod building on E. Colfax that houses the Cafe Africana Ethiopian Restaurant & Bar. (1959 ad)
Just a small illustration of Westland Auto Center, who were part of May-D&F in ‘63.
Typically cool International-style garage, gone now.
Nice illustration of The Vogue Furniture Store on S. Colorado, now gone. (1959 ad)
Ad for Design Center in Cherry Creek, 1959. This dark, mod building still survives at 3rd & Fillmore.
King Soopers was started in 1947. The ad shows five locations where you could get King Soopers Drugs, but they were up to nine stores at the time.
Fred Schmid Appliances, all of them gone now, I think. I assume the Denver location was in that building that Cricket on the Hill was in. Here is a Fred Schmid commercial from Colorado Springs in 1989:
Beautiful illustration for Roberts Carpets. This was in the building to the right of Famous Pizza on E. Colfax.
The mighty Buckhorn Exchange, still thee place to take out-of-towners when visiting Denver. Denver’s oldest restaurant, they have Denver liquor license number 1! (1959 ad)
Mountain States Telephone ad… fun read.
At the time of this ad in ‘63, the Western Federal Savings building (designed by Raymond Harry Ervin), was only a year old.
Close-up of the illustration, so you can see the ‘W’ peaking out over the top.
1959 ad for the Colorado Insurance Group Building in Boulder, still standing today (though altered and under-appreciated). Designed in 1955 by Boulder’s premiere International-style architect James Hunter, I think this also once housed a Joslin’s.
Close-up of the illustration.
Transistor radios at Joslin’s (You can click any of these ads to make them larger).
Lefty Martin’s, with a nice shot of Lefty.
Duffy’s Delicious Drinks’ ad with a shot of Frank Duffy. Looks like Duffy’s started in 1929, according to this 1959 ad.
Duffy’s lost their drink recipes in the years after Frank Duffy’s passing, but then they rediscovered all his old recipes in Frank’s unopened safe in 1995! Today, Duffy’s Rowdy Root Beer is made with the original recipe.
Robert Waxman ad from 1963. Waxman’s got rolled into Wolf Camera. Wolf’s are all closing soon.
The Electric Eye! The early days of auto-focus and auto-exposure from the Camera Exchange of Colorado in 1959.
Don’t know much about Shopper’s Mart except from the former addresses at the bottom of these advertisements, but there sure are a lot of fun items to see in these ads!
Cool toys from King’s Self Service Dept. Store in the Alameda Shopping Center. This shopping center has been recently redone and is now Alameda Square with the Pacific Ocean Marketplace.
More cool 1963 toys, this time from Spartan. One was at 44th & Wads, the other was in the shopping center at Sheridan & Jewell.
Gate’s Rubber tire ad. You could probably dig a foundation for a house doing burnouts in the mud with these babies.
Wrought-iron patio ad from ALSCO.
Another patio company, Pati-Port in 1959 (located next door to the Concrete Cowboy).
Fan Fair Discount City ad! Compare the illustration at the bottom of the ad to the photo below to get an idea of what it looked like back then.
This concrete-shell construction building is still standing in Aurora, though it will be taken down soon.
Built two years earlier than the 1963 ad by William Muchow in 1961, it was engineered by Denver concrete-shell specialist Milo Ketchum.
1963 four-eyed fashions at Lee Optical downtown.
Thrift-Way food markets, with a Scottish cartoon mascot, no less. And notice the other cartoon, “Mighty Slimmin for us Women”.
Probably the only surviving Thrift-Way sign, now a home for pigeons.
Denver Drumstick ad from 1963. These were famous for having a railroad motif with a minature train running around the upper walls and serving chicken in boxcar boxes. All gizzard order?!
Here is my illustration of the Denver Drumstick building as it appeared in the JCRS Shopping Center on W. Colfax (same mall as Casa Bonita). The building is still there, though barely recognizeable. It is the empty standalone building in the parking lot that used to always house bingo.
1959 ad for The Normandy, which was replaced by a mod Muchow building in the late ’60s,
I think.
Awww!
Patsy’s Inn, still around today! Though today’s ads say 1921, this 1959 ad declares “since 1889″!
John Wayne sex-comedy-western(?!?) ad from 1963 for the Paramount, the sole surviving theater from the classic era of downtown Denver movie palaces.
Racy ad for the Lakeshore Drive-In, over by Sloan’s Lake and KIMN radio.
The Lakeshore is no longer. (That is Eve Meyer, Russ Meyer’s wife)
Esquire theater ad from ‘63. Even then, advertising “Unusual films”!
The Bandbox jazz club was not related to the ’50s-’60s Denver Band Box record label. It was originally a Pik-A-Rib, then the Bandbox (run by Al Levin), then it became Hawk’s, then Le Bistro a Go Go, then The Mad Rushin, then The Factory, then Good Friends and is now the perfect location for Annie’s Cafe! (1963 ad)
And here is close-up of top ’50s jazz guitarist Johnny Smith. He came a huge star in 1952 with his hit recording of Moonlight in Vermont (with Stan Getz). At one point he gave it all up and moved to Colorado Springs in 1958 where he still lives today! Other interesting facts: He had to relearn the guitar after slicing his hands up in a fishing accident and he wrote Walk, Don’t Run, the Ventures first hit!
Bill ‘Honky Tonk’ Doggett at the Rainbow Ballroom in 1959! Not the Rainbow later made famous by Barry Fey, but a rhythm & blues club that carried national acts like Joe Turner, Ruth Brown, Tiny Hill, Chuck Willis, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Locklin, Roy Milton, The Medallions, The Five Royales, Little Willie John, Lloyd Price, Freddy Rodriguez and Dizzy Gillispie.
Where was it? Well, maybe you can help me out if you know the whole story. This is what I think, please feel free to write in and correct me. O.K. Farr ran this place in the ’40s at 475 Lincoln. In ‘57 it was listed as at 5th & Broadway. In ‘59 it was listed as 38th E. 5th where it was run by Leroy Smith of the legendary Five Points Rhythm Record Shop. Then it was bought by Verne Byers and moved downtown to 1346 Stout. 1346 Stout became the Academy Ballroom and then later the Astronaut’s night club, Club Baja.
It may surprise you to know that drag shows are nothing new and in the ’50s & ’60s were advertised in the paper right alongside Disney movies and toy ads. This ad is for the Victory Theater at 14th & Curtis (the intersection where the entrance to the Denver Performing Arts Complex is now).
A small ad for The Tropics with some fun names.
1963 ad for The Exodus, a folk club in the basement of the Raylane Hotel. Judy Collins and The Smother’s Brothers played here before they were famous. The Raylane is gone.
The Vincent Brothers at the Keyboard Lounge in the Mesa Motor Inn on W. Colfax. The Keyboard Lounge was run by Morey Amsterdam who also ran Denver’s Finer Arts record label. The Mesa Motor Inn is still there!
The Merry Go-Round Lounge on N. Pecos. Still there and still called the Merry Go-Round!
The Snug Harbour Tavern and The Captain’s Table located in the ‘fabulous’ Four Wind’s Motor Hotel on W. Colfax. The hotel is still there, though they painted over the original colors with dark drab a few years back. “Neutralized”, as Shannon likes to put it.
Get gassed-up at Big Al’s Gashouse in ‘63.
Laffitte’s, the seafood restuarant on the corner of 14th & larimer.
Paul Black and Joni Wilson were notable jazz players here in town in ‘63.
The Chez Paree, a strip club near The Brown Palace.
The Four Seasons Nite Club was a country bar way out on E. Colfax
on the other side of 225. Long gone.
The Olin Hotel still stands, though it’s an old folks home now (so not so much twistin’ going on).
The College Inn is still around today, or course.
The Mon-Vue Village in the old gas station at Garrison and Alameda, home to the Queen City Jazz Band, a still-extant Dixieland ensemble that held court here for 30 years or so. Today this bar is called the Paradise Cove and is right next door to the Mile Hi Church.
Ernie, Mac & Bill, another outfit similar to The Taylors, playing their regular gig at the Red Embers. There is an art-deco looking building here now, with the shop Platinum Cleaners. I am not sure if it is the original building, or it came later.
Close-up of Mac.
Al Fike, the Modern Minstrel Man, here playing El Rancho in Evergreen.
Al also was a regular at Taylor’s Supper Club.
Another Evergreen dinner spot, the Brook Forest Inn. Just call Evergreen 263. (1959 ad)
List of locations of Denver Compass Drive-In movie theaters from 1959. The old spot for the
West Drive-In is still vacant. The speaker poles might still be there.
List of Denver movie theaters from 1959. The buildings for The Golden, The Gothic, The Ritz (now Thrillseekers), The Federal, The Westwood (adult theater), The Holiday and The Santa Fe (The Atzlan) all still stand. From this list, only The Alladdin and The Victory are gone.
One more movie theater list from ‘59. The Centre, The Denver and The Aladdin are gone, but The Esquire, The Aurora Fox, The Mayan, The Ogden, The Bluebird, The Boulder Fox and The Longmont Fox still stand. Not sure where in Littleton The Woodlawn was located. Out of all three of these ads, only The Mayan and The Esquire function as fulltime movie theaters today.
Bob Jones Midway Motor Co. in 1959. Now a new location of Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Bill Dreiling Motor Co. ad from 1959. If I am not mistaken, this is the home of Heidelburg Motors, Shannon Stanbro’s favorite German car mechanic.
A 1959 ad for Merchant’s Oil Company showing Denver’s first gas station! How cool is that? Merchant’s Oil gave us the Phillip’s 66 gas stations with the notable canopies. You may recognize the ghost of these stations around town, as they look like this:
And finally, a sad note from the year 1963.
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Note from an Eyeballer: If you have old Denver newspapers from the ’50s and ’60s you would like to donate (or just loan) to us, drop us a line at Tom’s email address in the “About The Eye” tab. Also write if you would like your historically mod house or a favorite neighborhood structure photographed and posted on The Eye!
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October 31st, 2012 / 3 Comments » / by Tom Lundin
Rainbo Bakery
The thin-shell concrete roofline of the Rainbo Bakery in Commerce City. I assume this building was constructed in the mid-1960s utilizing the talents of Denver thin-shell engineer Milo Ketchum.
January 31st, 2012 / 1 Comment » / by Tom Lundin
Wonder Bread Bakery
White fluffy clouds hover over the precast concrete-barrel shells of Wonder Bread Bakery.
I assume this was built in the early-1960s with the involvement of Denver’s master concrete-
shell engineer Milo Ketchum.
Here is a view of the east side on a clear day. Thank you Wonder Bread, for making
I-25 smell good at times!
(click on photo to enlarge)
September 22nd, 2010 / 3 Comments » / by Tom Lundin
’60s modern apartment building
A 1960s-era modern apartment building over near the old University of Colorado Hospital area.
It still has it’s original coloring!
The concrete-shell entranceway is similar to the work by engineer Milo Ketchum.
August 2nd, 2010 / 1 Comment » / by Tom Lundin
Stapleton Hanger 61
Hanger 61, designed 1959 by Fisher, Fisher and Davis at Denver’s previous airport,
Stapleton. A restoration success!
The concrete shell construction was engineered by Milo Ketchum.
April 15th, 2010 / No Comments » / by admin
Fan Fair Discount City
The futuristic Fan Fair Discount City building, still standing in Aurora.
An excellent example of concrete shell construction by engineer Milo Ketchum for architect William Muchow in 1961.
The entranceway.
March 30th, 2010 / 3 Comments » / by Tom Lundin
