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Buildings Age More Gracefully Than I Do . . .

Contributed by: John Fellers on 9/10/2005

From the mid 80’s to the early 90’s I was a young darkroom technician working in the advertising department of a major Colorado retailer On my lunch breaks I indulged my passion for urban street photography. I must have shoot hundreds of rolls of b&w neg and color slide film in Downtown Denver. While my emphasis was mostly people, I did manage to capture a few buildings as well.

For the purposes of this contest I resurrected three images from those days: The ‘Bird Cage’ (now known as the Flower Mill Lofts ;) The Forney Museum (Now R.E.I. Sports;) and a view from underneath the old May D&F “Hyperbolic Paraboloid,” part of the old Zeckendorf Plaza (now a part of the Adams Mark Hotel.)

Back ‘in the day’ the old Platte Valley Flower Mill was an urban eyesore nicknamed ‘The Bird Cage’ by the homeless who frequented the area. Today the ‘Bird Cage’ has been resurrected as the Flower Mill Lofts and is surrounded by the City of Cuernavaca Park. Note the HOV (high occupancy vehicle) 20th street fly-over, and railroad tracks are still as they were.

The Tramway Power House was built in 1901 and used steam boilers to generate electricity for the old Denver Trolley system. It was closed in the early 50’s. After several years (decades?) of vacancy it was transformed into the Forney Transportation Museum. In October of 1998 the Forney Museum relocated and the old building was sold to REI Sports. REI spent around $40 million turning the old structure into one of its ‘flagship’ stores.

 You don’t have to be ‘too old’ a Denverite to remember the old 50’s era May D&F building, at 16th and Tremont, with its famous ‘Hyperbolic Paraboloid’ (designed by architect I.M. Pei.) Supposedly the siding on the main building was built from surplus aluminum originally intended for WWII B29s.  The ‘Hyperbolic Paraboloid’ portion of the building was demolished (much to the dismay of historical preservationists) and replaced by the Adams Mark ‘Elegant Box.’

For the most part I feel that these changes were a good thing. While I miss the old ‘Hyperbolic Paraboloid,’ I have nothing but praise for the developers who resurrected the Old Tramway Power House and the Flower Mill. If nothing else, I spent a lovely Saturday Morning buzzing around town on my old BMW bike re-shooting these locations with my ‘new’ Nikon digital DSLR.

‘Oh the times, they are a changing . . .’ (B. Dylan)

John H. Fellers III
(Formerly a Denver resident, now residing in Westminster Colorado)


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

John Fellers

Westminster , CO

John Fellers has posted 2 stories and 0 comments since joining on 9/14/2005. John Fellers 's average story rating is 0.
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