Galleries by Randel Metz

School's out ~ time to dig some worms and go fishing, or have a picnic in City Park, or just a shady stroll along the Platte. A summer day in 1915 was so much more peaceful than it is today. The people in these pictures are not stuck in traffic, or frantically checking their mobile devices for the latest tweet, or working 10 hour days to pay off some huge debt. Life in 1915 was not trouble free, but a look at some of these images is a peek into a time when people's troubles were at least a little smaller.

Charles Lillybridge, who billed himself as a "Scenic Photographer," took pictures of people almost exclusively, and these are just a few of his subjects.

Lillybridge's studio, which was also his house, was a makeshift structure more akin to a shed. It was built right next to the Platte River, by the Alameda Avenue bridge. Especially in the days when flooding was a frequent event, that was the cheapest real estate in town. Despite the obvious lack of money, Charles Lillybridge dedicated himself to taking photographs, of whatever he could, and at any opportunity.

Lillybridge's often crystal clear glass plate negatives provide candid and un-posed images of ordinary people, and zooming into the images in our database can yield some wonderful, detailed close-ups of faces that are both familiar and incredibly remote. It's interesting to actually think of our database as a kind of "time machine," that allows users to get a taste of the world that was - a world of bare feet, dirt paths, creaky wood floors, quiet streets, and something really difficult to find today: innocence.

Here is a more detailed biography of Charles Lillybridge, with a gallery of his photographs.

In World War II, Beaumont, Texas had become an industrial boom town, with its factories and shipyards busily engaged in providing for the U.S. Military in its battle against Hitler and Japan. In 1942 and 1943, almost 20,000 people moved into town, and the infrastructure needed to enforce the Jim Crow [segregation] laws wasn't up to the task, deeply irritating those who felt the need to keep certain people "in their place."

In June, 1943, segregated commuter buses were established to stop the racial violence that had been plaguing mixed transportation. Citywide food shortages, also arising from the sudden population surge, added to the toxic brew.

Competition for jobs was fierce, and brought racial tensions into sharp relief. To make matters even worse, the Beaumont chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was planning to host a regional KKK convention on June 29. They hoped to bring 15,000 to 20,000 Klansmen from all over the South, and the proposed meeting had received an enormous amount of media attention. At the same time, the black community was preparing to commemorate the freeing of the slaves in Texas for its annual Juneteenth celebration, on June 19, when hundreds of East Texas blacks were expected to come to Beaumont.

Against this backdrop, early that June, a local white woman claimed that a black man she had hired to work in her garden had broken into the house and raped her, though later she was unable to identify him from the suspects held at the City Jail.

Circulating among the crew at the Pennsylvania Shipyard, the story became a catalyst for a boiling rage, and finally, on June 15, 2,000 men walked off the job and marched in a fury to the Beaumont City Hall. Another 1,000 sympathetic townsfolk joined them along the way, and later, after the carnage, observers estimate the anarchic and leaderless mob at some 4,000 people.

The UP story from the Rocky Mountain News clipping in our collection says that the crowd

“ appeared at the courthouse, seeking the accused Negro. Authorities had permitted the men to see that the Negro was not there, but they were not satisfied.

Sheriff Bill Richardson stepped out of the door of the courthouse, which also houses the county jail, with a sub-machine gun on his arm.

'I'm damned tired of all this,' he shouted. 'You boys break it up now and go back to building ships like you should be doing.' Someone in the crowd shouted back an insult. 'Let the damned fool that said that step up,' Richardson replied. 'Fact is, I'll take you all on - one at a time. And let me tell you, I'm going to keep law and order in this county.' "

Rebuffed, the unsatisfied and angry mob dispersed into small bands and moved into the black section of Beaumont. With guns, axes, and hammers, they smashed and burned their way through black neighborhoods from downtown to the central and north part of Beaumont. Over a period of 24 hours, the rioters looted and burned black stores, restaurants, businesses, and over 100 homes.

That night, Mayor George Gary called in the Texas National Guard and acting governor A.M. Aiken Jr. declared Beaumont to be under martial law.  About 1,800 guardsmen entered Beaumont along with 100 state police and 75 Texas Rangers. Upon their arrival, at 8:30 p.m., a curfew was established, but by that time most of the madness had subsided.

The Texas Highway Patrol placed roadblocks around the city to seal it off against rural whites who threatened to join the mob. Mayor Gary closed all liquor stores, parks, and playgrounds to prevent the gathering of large crowds. Black workers were barred from going to work. The curfew was lifted the next day on June 16, and the guardsmen left town.

The Jefferson County Fairgrounds was turned into a stockade to accommodate the overflow of prisoners from the city and county jails. By June 20 a military tribunal had reviewed the cases of the 206 arrested. Twenty-nine were turned over to civil authorities on charges of assault and battery, unlawful assembly, and arson. The remainder were released, mostly because of lack of evidence. On June 20, Aikin ended the period of martial law. During the five day period 3 people were killed.

Beaumont then joined Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, Mobile, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C., as sites of bloody race riots in the summer of 1943, fully 20 years before the Civil Rights Riots of the 1960s.

It is an important distinction to note that these were not uprisings by an oppressed minority - these were in effect pogroms - attacks by the majority on a scapegoated target. Racism is projection - a defense mechanism in which one group unconsciously rejects their own unacceptable attributes by ascribing them to a different group that is perceived as "other." These little-noted and conveniently forgotten events are a crucial part of the story of Black Oppression in the United States, and remembering them adds deeper meaning to the catch-phrase "race riot."

In the face of this story, contemporary cries of "tyranny" ring hollow. Blanket condemnations of "government" ignore the vital importance of the authorities in containing a society that sometimes loses control of itself.

"Pray for the welfare of the government, for without respect for the government people would swallow each other alive" Talmud, Avot 3:2

The photos for this blog entry were found on the Internet and are not part of the Denver Public Library Collection.

Though 1886 is generally considered the birth year of the modern automobile, with the introduction of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the Model T Ford was the first car that was affordable for middle-class Americans. Ford's innovation was mass-production, which allowed lower prices and a steady supply to fill ever-growing demands.

The Model T, affectionately nicknamed the "Tin Lizzie," was introduced in 1908. It was just a hundred years ago, in 1913, when cars started showing up more in the West and outside of cities. In those days, in small town and rural America, the novelty of the automobile was still enough to bring everyone outside to look when one showed up on Main Street.

By 1914, the assembly process for the Model T had been so streamlined it took only 93 minutes to assemble a car. That year Ford produced more cars than all other automakers combined. The Model T was a great commercial success, and by the time Henry made his 10 millionth car, 50 percent of all cars in the world were Fords. It was so successful that Ford did not purchase any advertising between 1917 and 1923; more than 15 million Model Ts were manufactured, reaching a rate of 9,000 to 10,000 cars a day in 1925, or 2 million annually, more than any other model of its day, at a price of just $240.

The Model T was produced without changes for eighteen years, until 1927, when Ford replaced it with the Model A, or "A-Rod," after much pressure from his Board of Directors and stockholders. Other manufacturers were providing stiff competition with new features, like updated styling, or like being able to choose other colors besides black. Model T production was finally surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle on February 17, 1972.

Today, automobiles are so deeply entrenched in modern society that they have shaped the very planning of suburban America. Vast acres of tract homes spread out much more than would be workable in a pedestrian-based model, and virtually everyone drives for every errand. In the cities, we sit in traffic jams on six-lane boulevards lined with car dealerships, parking lots, and gas stations. Instead of prairies and countless buffalo, we see an ocean of glinting glass and metal.

Included in the slide show is a photo of a car-train hybrid that is unique to Colorado. The "Galloping Goose," the popular name given to a series of seven railcars, was built between 1931 and 1936 by the Rio Grande Southern Railroad and operated until the end of service on the line in the early 1950s. To save money, the-cash strapped RGS put automobile bodies on narrow gauge railroad chassis and used them for lighter loads, saving the more expensive and heavy steam locomotives for passengers and heavy cargo. All of the "geese" were built in the railroad's shops at Ridgway, Colorado. The first was built in 1931 from the body of a Buick "Master Six" four-door sedan.

As automobiles and trucks came of age, they went through countless variations and adaptations. These photographs show a variety of the inventive paint jobs, body styles, and practical uses that cars were central to. There are a few electric cars, some delivery trucks and vans, touring buses, and several car-as-prop photos.

Browse many more photos of interesting vehicles in our collection by searching for "automobiles," "trucks," "car," "van," or "traffic."

Halloween didn't become the Big Event it is today until the 1950s, and only in the last 10 or 15 years has it become the all-out extravaganza it is, now, in the 2010s. But people in times past managed to figure out all kinds of excuses to raid the attic and play dressup ~ Denver Press Club parties, events hosted by the Kermis (a Catholic fund-raising group), Central City theater actors, and sometimes less amusing causes like a KKK rally or a Native American reduced to wearing an Uncle Sam outfit.

Amazing results were achieved with fabric, beads, and boot polish, and elaborate headgear always produced a great effect without too much effort. Professionals had more polished costumes, but often a man just showing up in his long underwear could pass for a footman - all he needed was a plywood halberd to put over his shoulder.

Women's bathing suits in the 20s and 30s were fanciful enough to pass as costumes just on a day at Lakeside, and there were plenty of men who seemed to delight in donning women's clothes at the drop of a hat, especially Harry Rhoads. In a pinch, almost anything could be made into a costume using fringe or fur, and countless gypsies, hobos, princes, or Little Bo Peeps were fashioned out of stuff found around the house.

The Colorado Springs Sunflower Carnival Parade was a great place for people to dress up, as was St. Patrick's day, a Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, a school play, or promotional Ground Hog day photoshoots.

Search our database for "costume," "outfit," or even "hat" to browse through the hundreds of "fashion looks" that are in our collection, and

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Going to get groceries is something almost everyone experiences, and remembers doing all their lives. It's such an ordinary, routine part of life, that unless we travel to another country, the experience is fairly unremarkable.

However, even without a plane ticket to some exotic destination, it's possible to travel in time, and go back to grocery stores right here in Colorado that are a complete departure from what we see in our daily humdrum lives.

From single owner, one location food stores, bakeries and butcher shops, to the "Home Public Market," Denver had a varied and large assortment of places to go for groceries. The atmosphere was tidy, cheerful, and constantly packed with a wide selection of items to choose from, employing the timeless marketing strategy of "have so many products for sale that no one can leave without buying at least a few things that weren't on their lists."

The "Home Public Market," at 14th and California Street in downtown Denver, was a European style open market with individual vendors occupying stalls and handling their own buying, selling, and finances. It had a soda fountain, lunch counters, and seating areas, and no doubt was a hub of social connection for people from all over town. A bustling concern through the 20s and 30s, it was finally demolished in 1948.

The photos in the slide show include a few of the other grocery stores represented in our photo collection, including the Red Star Grocery, Arcade Grocery & Market, the Tom Oatis Grocery, and the Wolfe Londoner's Store. There are many fascinating store interiors in our collection, and in another blog we'll look at some of the luxurious department stores that dotted Denver's busy shopping district in times past. To browse these photos, just search "Grocery Interiors."

Looking at the carefully stacked towers of cans and fruit, it's obvious that there were no Bart Simpsons around in those days to pull out that bottom can and wreak havoc - or maybe they were just outside doing more grownup things like learning to twirl a six-shooter...

They say "Don't judge a book by its cover," but book makers have always known that platitudes aside, the cover of the book is often what catches people's interest and influences their decision to make a purchase.

Back in the days before color printing was ubiquitous and when interior book graphics were always black and white line art or lithographs, the cover was the only opportunity to use color.

Thanks to innovations in the manufacture of cloth and new techniques for ornamental blocking, nineteenth century publishers were able to mass-produce books with decorative cloth-covered, gilt-blocked casings, frequently with results of exquisite beauty.

For a period of some forty years, as the middle class developed and the demand for reading material increased rapidly, publishers relied on handsome cover and spine designs to make their books attractive as physical artifacts, using not only cloth but also materials such as paper, papier maché and various forms of leather.

The artists who were responsible for designing the bindings had the freedom to experiment widely, and the variety achieved in their best work is extraordinary.

The advent of gold-stamped decoration, circa 1832, was the most important factor in the acceptance of publishers' bindings. Gold stamping brought to the mass-produced book some of the prestige associated with gold-tooled leather bindings of the pre-industrial era.

In fact, stamping often imitated the decorative styles and motifs of the hand-finished book. However, gold stamping also developed its own styles and imagery that reflected the period's taste and culture.

Gold stamping was a favored means of decoration throughout the nineteenth century, but beginning in the last decades, black and color stamping and color lithograph covers gained increasing popularity at its expense. The 1890s did, however, witness a last blaze of glory for the gold-stamped binding, before the twentieth-century triumph of the dust jacket sounded its death knell.

Here is a gallery of some especially nice Decorative Book Covers.

The Denver Public Library and especially the Western History Collection holds many of these decorated books, and they can be found by searching for "Decorative Book Covers."

Another of the lesser known Colorado photographers represented in our database is Lloyd Warren Rule, a commercial photographer who after serving in the Army during World War II and Korean War, and receiving the Bronze Star, became the head photographer for the Denver Art Museum.

Apparently Mr. Rule was also commissioned to make pictures for various businesses and publicity events. Among the 321 of his photos in our online collection are a wide variety of subjects, often surprising and always technically precise.

Many of the photos are so polished and carefully posed that they qualify as classic stock art. The Green Mountain Townhome pictures capture the peak of the 1960s modern style, and some of them were featured in a previous "Madmen at the Library" blog.

The garish colors, stiff fabric and super short skirts in the Columbia Savings promotional photo are quintessential commercial interpretations of pop culture, complete with Peter Max style graphics and lettering with the clever pun: "The Finanswer."

The Rule photos also catch the tail end of the WWII era, showing soldiers, war bond promotions, Civil Defense demonstrations and Cold War messages. There are numerous photos taken in hospitals, orphanages and schools, and others depict people at work in various places.

More surprises in this group are Mr. Rule's photos of farm people in Korea, showing iconic images of pre-modern rural life in a place not usually covered in our database.

View our "Acclaimed Western Photographers" entry on Lloyd Rule to learn about his life and to see a gallery of his photographs.

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Many of the photographers in our database are reknowned as national figures, and many others are private individuals who enjoyed the new technology of photography as a hobby. William Henry Jackson's scenic photographs were reproduced by the millions, and the Native American images by David Barry and Edward Sheriff Curtis are widely reproduced and admired.

Of the less known, local photographers represented in our collection, one of the most fascinating is Charles Lillybridge, who billed himself as a "Scenic Photographer," but who took pictures of people almost exclusively.

Lillybridge's studio, which was also his house, was a makeshift structure more akin to a shed. It was built right next to the Platte River, by the Alameda Avenue bridge. Especially in the days when flooding was a frequent event, that was the cheapest real estate in town. Despite the obvious lack of money, Charles Lillybridge dedicated himself to taking photographs, of whatever he could, and at any opportunity. Since the only thing in his neighborhood was Alameda Avenue and the path along the Platte River, he took pictures of people - the only subjects of much interest in the area. When the Alameda Avenue railroad underpass was built in 1909, Lillybridge had new targets for his camera, and he made the best of it. Apparently he was also able to make it to the City Park occasionally and took people pictures there.

Thus, this "Scenic Photographer" produced a body of work vastly more interesting than pictures of mountains and deserts. Lillybridge's often crystal clear glass plate negatives provide candid and un-posed images of ordinary people, many who had never been in front of a camera, and others who may have had their pictures taken, but weren't prepared for it just that morning.

The faces in these images show us all kinds of feelings: playfulness, suspicion, befuddlement - and how people looked on a average day coming home from work, or out for a Sunday walk. We see construction workers, delivery boys, bicylists, and people at picnics.

Another notable fact about these photos is that it's quite possible that many were never printed, and that these faces are being seen for the first time in a century. There are only two or three of them that identify the subject, and one gets the feeling that he charged the sitters nothing, and took his pictures out of sheer love of the process.

An interesting side note is that the cataloging of these images took place at the Colorado History Museum [now History Colorado], who owns the glass plate negatives. At that time [1995] there was no wi-fi, and since we couldn't get the City to approve a wire under Broadway, a laser link was built on the roof of the Museum with a receiver on the roof of the Burnam Hoyt wing of the Central Library. That receiver unit is still there, an artifact of recent history.

There are 1,941 Lillybridge images in our database, and many not shown in this slide show are of steam tractors, horse drawn excavation equipment, concrete forms, and scaffolding. Many more are of people. Many of the negatives are damaged, with peeling emulsion, and some aren't as well focused, but it's fascinating to search through the whole group, which you can do here.

[Note that some of these images have been adjusted for contrast and rotation]

Ten days ago, I was planning to do a blog entry on "Colorado's History of Floods," of which we have many pictures, but recent events have changed my mind. If you want to look at historic flood damage, here are those photos, but this week's blog entry is about something much more pleasant: The Denver Garden Club Lantern Slides.

Though "Lantern Slides" are a 19th century technology, apparently the garden club produced them in the 20s and 30s out of sheer delight with their effect at meetings and other events when projected on the wall of a darkened room. Using photographs by various photographers including L.C. McClure and Edward Milligan, the hand colored glass plates record the gardens of Denver's elite - people who could afford reflecting pools, lotus ponds, elephant fountains, and a personal howitzer/garden ornament.

The Garden Club of Denver was founded in 1916 by Mrs. J. Floyd Welborn, Mrs. J. J. B. Benedict and Mrs. Bradish Morse. During its first year, the club consisted of 23 members who paid dues of $1.00. In 1917, an associate membership formed, which was limited to 20 members. These members did not pay dues or vote, however they were invited to attend flower shows, lectures and other club activities. In 1918, the club adopted its constitution and by-laws and elected the first president of the club, Mrs. Bradish Morse. In 1920, through the efforts of club president, Mrs. Welborn, the Garden Club of Denver became a member of the Garden Club of America.

Garden Club members participated in numerous civic causes and formed partnerships with other nature-related and conservation organizations. In 1922, club members planted and maintained a garden at the Art Museum’s headquarters at Chappel House located at 1300 Logan Street in Denver. In 1939, the club voted to plan, plant and maintain a garden between the Opera House and the Teller House in Central City. In 1948, the U. S. Forest Service and the Garden Club of Denver signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a trail on Mount Goliath. The club continues to maintain the trail.

One of the most significant Garden Club projects was the establishment and development of the Denver Botanic Gardens. The Colorado Forestry and Horticulture Society was the forerunner of the Gardens. Club members belonged to and participated in many of the Society’s activities. The affiliation between the Garden Club and the Society led to the establishment of a botanic garden in Denver. In 1951, the Denver Botanic Gardens became a legal entity with headquarters in the basement of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (formerly known as the Natural History Museum). In 1954, the club voted to make the Botanic Gardens its main project.

The original gardens consisted of a box canyon garden located in City Park near the Museum of Nature and Science. In 1958, Mrs. James Waring donated money to acquire a new headquarters building through the purchase of 18 acres at York Street and Ninth Avenue. The Gardens moved to that location permanently in 1961. In the 1960s and 1970s the club assumed the planning and installation of the Lobby Court displays, restoration of the Hammer Garden and the development of the Home Demonstration Garden. Since then, the Garden Club has continued to be involved in Denver Botanic Gardens in various capacities.

The Garden Club of Denver financed club activities through a variety of events. The club hosted three “Patio and Garden” sales, four “Flowers and Art” shows held at the Denver Art Museum, floral arrangement and table-setting contests at the Icehouse, other venues which were open to the public and numerous members-only flower shows. In addition to local club activities, members participated in the Garden Club of America’s national and regional meetings. Members interested in landscaping and architecture have enjoyed trips to historic areas of the South and Bermuda.

To this day, the Denver Garden Club continues to be active in gardening and civic events.

The slides to the left are of several different residences, some in Capitol Hill right near the Denver Botanic Gardens, and others are in locations around town. Prominent early Denver names like "George W. Gano," "Henry Swan," "Delos Chapell," and "Verner Zevola Reed" are represented, along with photos of the dramatic "Charlford Estate" in Sedalia, designed in 1926 for Charles Johnson by Burnham and Merrill Hoyt.

The Denver Public Library holds the records of the Denver Garden Club in our Manuscript collection, and you can see the details here.

There are 120 of these lantern slides in the collection, and you can see them here. Be sure and click on the photos to the left to see the larger versions.

And all of the best wishes and comfort to our unfortunate Colorado neighbors who have suffered from the recent terrible flooding.

Anyone who has spent time with computers knows that occasionally, things don't work out exactly as one might have intended. A single wrong keystroke somewhere in a sea of code can wreak havoc, and then in turn, take a lot of time to sort out.

Our online database contains some 130,000 images, and about three years ago, 15 years after we first activated the collection, we transitioned the entire body of material into a new management software, called "ContentDM." Among many improvements, the new platform allows a user to zoom-in to images and see greater detail; it has a way to create a favorites list; it allows users to create their own tags and ratings; and it provides much greater behind-the-scenes sorting and editing capabilities.

For a number of various reasons, the migration of the database resulted in sizeable number of items that had lost their connection between the image file and the "metadata" that provides the title, call number, creator, content, and other useful information. In addition, even before the move, we also had a number of "broken" images - titles showing an error placemarker where a thumbnail should be. These problem records came to be known as "Orphan Files," and consisted of about 4,500 individual items.

The migration to ContentDM was like a "parting of the clouds" - suddenly we were able to bring all of the broken items together in one folder. We could sort them, isolate the problems, and fix many of them in large groups, with "global" editing capabilities.

This process took about three years, involving the efforts of several team members, each with an array of other work responsibilities, meaning that the "Orphan Project" progressed in halting and sporadic steps. The process of sorting the list of problem items, identifying and noting the various types of error that existed, and establishing a work flow, took almost a year in itself. Many items were repaired by mining our outdated but useful collection of compact discs, which had been created way back in the early 1990s when the project began. The easiest to repair only needed code editing - fixing a typo. Many other items needed to be re-scanned, a much larger hurdle.

The photographs on the left are a few of the favorites I noted during my extended combing of the files over the last three years, and there are a many more.

The first is an iconic Colorado scene, taken on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National park in the late 1930s. Trail Ridge Road, a stretch of U.S. Highway 34, is the highest continuous paved road in the United States. Also known as Trail Ridge Road/Beaver Meadow National Scenic Byway, it traverses Rocky Mountain National Park from Estes Park, Colorado in the east to Grand Lake, Colorado in the west. It was first made passable to automobiles in 1921, and reached its finished form in 1938.

The next two items are publicity photographs made by the Winter-Weiss Company, who manufactured custom truck bodies, trailers and buses. You don't often see a Harley Davidson motorcycle with a bellows camera sidecar, or an Indian Motorcycle sporting a milk bottle. We have a large number of interesting and unique vehicles in our collection, worthy of their own whole category of blog entries. These would turn as many heads today rolling down the street as they did then - but now it would be on youtube in minutes.

The photo of an Argentine Central Railway train at the summit of McClellan Mountain is a stunning testament to the triumph of technology over nature - to drive a train to the top of a mountain was the epitome of the industrial vision. Edward Wilcox (namesake of nearby Mount Wilcox), who owned a mining company and was a minister as well, built the nearby [ghost] town of Waldorf around 1900. From 1905-1906, he established the Argentine Central Railroad for transporting silver ore. Wilcox saw a way to make the area pay from tourist dollars as well. He extended the railroad so that it took people up McClellan Mountain to a notch north of the summit, and this image shows the passengers enjoying the view from the 13,587 foot peak.

Part of the orphan group was a number of William Henry Jackson photochroms. 

"Photochrom," an early colorization technique, involved combining a glass negative with the color lithography process. The photos selected for the process were always the most iconic, and so they're all great pictures. This photo of Mission San Juan Capistrano in San Juan Capistrano, California, was one of the almost 20,000 views offered by the Detroit Publishing Company. There was a craze of collecting these in the 1890s, and tens of millions of them were sold. Browse through the some 200 of them in our database, by searching "photochrom."

Good ole' Harry Rhoads. The good-natured Rocky Mountain News journalist captured images of every kind from the 1890s to the 1950s - and his jovial nature is often reflected in the faces of his subjects, like this woman with her puppy dogs. 

The second Rhoads photo here not only shows some great old cars [a 1910 Maxwell!] and women with amazing hats, it shows what happens to glass negatives when they get damaged in one way or another. Many of the greatest Rhoads photos from the era have this kind of deterioration - one wonders if they were all in a box together and then got wet.

Fred Trinkle poses in a W.H. Kistler Stationery Co. delivery truck, another classic early vehicle.

The interior photo of the Denver Post Office at 1823 Stout Street has a lot of contrast and bold shapes, and conjures ideas about how ground mail was once an exciting and bustling enterprise.

Firemen in uniforms pose with their new fire engine, outside the firehouse door of Company No. 2, in Colorado Springs. It's identified as the first motorized fire engine in the Springs, and was purchased at a cost of $2476.50. The pinnacle of every boy's fire truck fantasies, this gem, in mint condition, would probably sell today for a hundred times that price.

Finally, a billboard at Camp Hale, training grounds for the legendary 10th Mountain Division, the crack soldiers-on-skis team that fought the good fight in WWII Italy. This caricature depicts the general impulse of the United States military towards unjust aggressors, back when it was much easier to pinpoint them.

[Be sure to click on the photos to the left to see larger versions.]

A big part of settling the West was road building. A simple enough undertaking on the flatlands, the precipitous terrain of the Rocky Mountains presented much bigger engineering challenges. Shortening the way between destinations often meant traversing dizzying cliffs and plunging depths that dwelt side by side - and to produce an even roadway with a manageable grade became an almost Olympian competition of engineering ingenuity.

Our first image is of the "Otto Mears Toll Road," named after the "Pathfinder of the San Juans," Otto Mears. Mears built hundreds of miles of toll roads in the rough terrain of the young state of Colorado, and the 12 mile section of U.S. Route 550 over 11,000 foot Red Mountain Pass, connecting the mining towns of Silverton and Ouray, is his most well known achievement. As you can see in this William Henry Jackson photo, the "Million Dollar Highway" is characterized by steep cliffs, narrow lanes, and a lack of guardrails [to this day] for the narrow pathway cut directly into the side of the mountain.

Railroad routes required even more difficult solutions to the up and down topography, and to accommodate the gentle grades and curves needed, tunnels and in this case, trestles, were employed to get the job done. Another of Jackson's photos shows a Union Pacific Railway Company train on a high trestle bridge over Dale Creek in Albany County, Wyoming.

Next is a Harry H. Buckwalter photo of the Ouray Stage Line, with passengers, crossing a wooden bridge on the Million Dollar Highway in the 1890s. One wonders at the trusting nature of the passengers - perhaps if they saw the bridge they were crossing from this view they wouldn't be so comfortable. I myself would be tempted to get out and crawl...

Next, another William H. Jackson photo shows the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad trestle over Diablo Cañon in Coconino County, Arizona. This is a steel and concrete structure, and the men posing on it are no doubt confident of their own handiwork, especially after probably hanging from it in harnesses to weld the thing together. It's a long way down - don't drop that screwdriver, Bill!

The mining industry drove many engineering innovations, and one of the commonly used technologies was the "flume." A flume is an elevated "gravity chute" for water - but the water is merely a vehicle for transporting other materials, namely, gold and silver ore. Though not a thrill for travelers, this "Flume on a Granite Wall" was probably pretty hair raising to build.

Next is a picture of the Montrose Placer Mining Company flume, in Montrose County, Colorado, during its construction in 1890. Perched 400 feet above the Dolores River, traces of this flume are still visible from Highway 141 heading down to Nucla. The gentleman posing at the railing must have had nerves of steel.

Once considered an engineering wonder of the world, the Devil’s Gate High Bridge section of the Georgetown Loop is still functioning and serves as a tourist attraction in Georgetown, Colorado. Adding to its appeal is the fact that it's a narrow gauge route - a favorite subspecies to railroad buffs.

This spectacular stretch of track was completed in 1884 and connected the thriving mining towns of Georgetown and Silver Plume, only 2 miles apart in the steep, narrow canyon of Clear Creek. Engineers designed a corkscrew route that traveled nearly twice that distance to connect them, slowly gaining more than 600 feet in elevation. The route included horseshoe curves, grades of up to 4%, and four bridges across Clear Creek, including the massive Devil’s Gate High Bridge, towering 95 feet above the creek at the bottom.

Finally, we have an L.C. McClure view of another of Otto Mears' routes, the Highline, Silverton Branch, near Rockwood in the Canyon of the Rio Los Animas (Animas Gorge), in La Plata County, Colorado. This is another narrow gauge route, and we see a Denver & Rio Grande Railway train with one freight and two passenger cars on a rocky cliff shelf high above the Animas River in about 1895. 

Otto Mears built several railroads during his 91 years, including the Rio Grande Southern Railroad from Durango to Ridgway, the Silverton Railroad, and the Silverton Northern Railroad. From 1888 to 1892, Mears issued special railroad passes to dignitaries and friends to allow them to ride free on any of his lines. Some of these rare passes were made of silver or gold and are now highly prized collectors' items.

[Be sure to click the photos to the left for larger versions.]

Our first eye-catching photo was made by Harry Buckwalter, and shows the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway and the observation tower at the top of 14,110 foot high Pikes Peak. The incline railway, also known as the Pikes Peak Cog Railway, is by far the highest in North America, and since 1890 has been taking tourists to the summit from Manitou Springs at the mountain's base. It looks like the photographer did a little bit of darkroom doctoring on this photo, to heighten the contrast in the clouds. We have almost 2,000 Buckwalter photos in our database, documenting people and his western travels.

The next picture is the Alfred Bromfield residence in Englewood, designed by noted Colorado architect Burnam Hoyt, taken by the Chicago architectural photography firm, Hedrich-Blessing. We have 90 of their photos in our database, and all are great examples of excellent composition and contrast.

The curved stairway in the Alonzo Hartman residence near Gunnison was photographed by Sandra Dallas, the Colorado author, and is one of almost 370 of her photos in our database. Our collection of Dallas photos focuses primarily on buildings and architectural details in Colorado mining towns. 

The aerodynamic shape of the Centennial Airport, in Englewood, was captured by "Dr. Colorado," a.k.a. Tom The Professor, Professor of History at the University of Colorado in Denver. The almost 1700 Tom The Professor photos in our database document many important Colorado landmarks, many long gone, and many still standing.

The mysterious interior of a kiva, or Native American ceremonial chamber, is another of Jesse Nussbaum's images from Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico. Nussbaum, one of Mesa Verde National Monument's first Superintendents, created quite a body of work, and over 350 of his images are in our database, documenting the Native American legacy.

Finally, we have a photo of "Senator" Morgan, "Six Day Champion," with his big wheel bicycle. In the pioneer days, men often took titles that they weren't really entitled to, and "Doc," "Sarge," "Judge," and in this case "Senator" became affectionate monikers to distinguish a familiar character. The "Six Day Champion" probably refers to a biking trip, common in the early days of bicycles, and remarkable in that for the most part, they took place on dirt roads. This photo was taken in Leadville, so those dirt roads were probably also at an elevation of eight or nine thousand feet. This photo is one of 12 from the William W. Cecil album, a History Colorado collection.

[Be sure to click on the photos to the left to see larger versions]

Our photo collection has thousands of portraits of men, women and children, many unidentified. Buffalo Bill, Nate Salsbury, Kit Carson, Sitting Bull, presidents, governors, mayors and sheriffs and other famous or infamous individuals populate the database and all make appearances with a simple search - but some real characters are hiding in there and don't show up as readily.

Our first example is John Carnsue, a railroader from Gunnison, Colorado. This dapper gent is impeccable in his white top hat and shows us how a properly fitted man looks right before a big date, or perhaps an award ceremony.

Next is one of Ola Garrison's many excellent portraits, this one of an unidentified man smoking a pipe and knitting. [Knitting!] This unexpected version of manhood upends the stereotype of "rugged pioneer" by showing us that in those days men could show a more sensitive side without being self conscious. Browse through almost 700 Ola Garrison photos in our database, from the History Colorado collection, for some first class people watching.

The grizzled guy with the pipe fits the preconceived image of "pioneer" much more easily. Another History Colorado image, this is by the famous Trinidad photographer Oliver Aultman, who opened his Colorado studio in 1890, and whose grandson Glen carried on the work until his death in 2000. Browse over 1,950 Aultman images [mostly portraits] in our database, and see the wide ethnic diversity that characterized early Colorado.

Next, mining tycoon Abel D. Breed sits with a coffee service made of silver from his own Caribou Mine [Boulder County], one of the biggest silver producers in the state. The mine is probably most famous for producing the silver ingots used to pave Eureka Street in front of the Teller House in Central City when President Ulysses S. Grant visited the mining region, but here we see that Mr. Breed liked to use his great wealth for other, more genteel purposes. The photograph is by Donald Kemp, who made photographs between the 1920s and about 1960. His photos are mostly of mines and miners, and some, like this one are copies of earlier photographs. The 431 Kemp images in our database are of all kinds of things: scenery, portraits, mines and "art photos."

Next is a self portrait by Joseph Collier, a Colorado photographer originally from Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He came to Colorado and opened a photo studio in Central City in 1871, and after eight years opened up shop in Denver and was a reknowned locally until he died in 1910. His photos of early mining, famous Colorado scenery, and the Ute Indians constitute an important part of the historical record, and over 400 of his photos are in our searchable database.

In this image, Collier hearkens back to his homeland in full Scottish gear, including a "sporran," which is Gaelic for "purse" - another departure from today's narrower notions of what a man will hang from his belt...

Next, "Mountain Charlie" Charles Stewart Stobie poses for one of his many portraits, hinting that perhaps male preening is only slightly different today than it was in 1869 when this image was made. Stobie, like adventurous men today, tried his hand at many things, and did well with most. He was a painter, photographer, Indian scout, buffalo hunter, interpreter, and adopted member of the White Ute Indian tribe, and known by them as "Paghaghet" or Long Hair.

Stobie kept company with other colorful frontier characters like Buffalo Bill [William Cody], Wild Bill Hickock, Frederick Remington, and Kit Carson. Coming west in about 1864, with a horse-mule train at a stage station along the route to Fort Kearney, his party skirmished with Indians three times east of Fort Sedgwick and Stobie was credited with killing seven Indians. The feat was noted in the Rocky Mountain News before his arrival in Denver, and "from that time forward," Stobie later said, "I never wanted for employment, friends or money in Colorado."

The 28 images of Mountain Charlie that we have in our database are from History Colorado, and give a great introduction to the world of scouts and adventurers.

The picture of the miner with the pipe and head lamp is unidentified and by an unknown photographer and an example of some of our really great stock photos that we know nothing about. If you want a classic image of a miner, this is it. If you want more, just search the database for: "miners."

Finally, we have another Aultman portrait, of a young man all ready for a tennis game. One wonders if this is his regular look, or if he's just been rummaging through Aultman's costume racks. Either way, it would be fascinating to see an encounter between our dapper sportsman here and some of the other gents up the page. Who knows, this guy might be a real scrapper when he's not getting his picture taken.

[Be sure to click on the photos to the left to see larger versions]

Books, blogs, television shows, and web featurettes now regularly bring us charming looks at how people have solved the challenges of living in a tiny space. Builders and modular home designers have whole catalogs of tiny, stylish, efficient and practical homes with miniscule footprints. People have remodeled water tanks, railroad cars, buses, boats, and even dumpsters into postage stamp sized living spaces.

Far from a new phenomenon, pioneers of the West were expert at using local materials to create shelters that were just big enough to get out of the weather until their fortunes panned out and let them build the vast mansions of their dreams.

Our first example is a settler's cabin in Goldfield, Teller County, Colorado, when the town was still inventing itself, in probably about 1895. Looking at the simple structure, and the patient, hard working miner's wife with her daughter, it's hard to imagine that the town eventually exported more than $25 Million dollars worth of gold. One wonders if this woman and child saw any of that money.

The next image is a photograph by Thomas McKee, and is simply titled: "Hughy." This comfortable looking home has the look of being well lived in, with it's organized workbench, awning, doghouse, and a hook where a man can hang his hat. He even has a nice boardwalk in front of the entry, to keep the worst of the mud from getting tracked in. Imagine the life that unfolded under that fancy shingle roof.

The stone cabin overlooking Jenny Lind Gulch was captured in this image by Donald Kemp, and shows a spectacular view of the mountains of Gilpin County, Colorado, near the mining town of Apex. The simplicity and quiet, combined with the breathtaking scenery, would command a premium to today's beleaguered city dwellers seeking retreat. An unknown prospector built this house of local rock, and whether he went on to a mansion in Denver or to skid row, we'll never know.

The B. Ware and I. Steele Pawn Shop was one of many businesses in the mining supply town of Ironton, Ouray County, Colorado. The fabulous wealth generated by the surrounding silver mines enriched the mine owners and the support businesses, leaving the miners to live paycheck to paycheck, and sometimes having to pawn their valuables to make it to the next week, after exhausting their funds on liquor and other forms of entertainment available in nearby Silverton. Charles Goodman captured this image on September 8, 1886, and it shows the well dressed proprietors and family in front of their tiny, and humorously named enterprise.

Another of Charles McKee's photographs shows the Buckeye Cabin in the La Salle mountains of Utah, which doubled as an assayer's office. Assayers were another of the support businesses that fed off of the mining industry, analyzing mineral samples and certifying their value for the miners. This 1897 building has a deep porch covering the worktable and equipment necessary for the job, and a gold pan is suggestively positioned in the yard. The boy sitting on the porch is serious beyond his age, having no doubt seen more hard living than many adults today. Using the zoom tool, we can examine the rifles, chemical bottles, and other paraphernalia strewn about in bachelor fashion.

Finally, we have an 1893 William Gillen photograph of the S. J. Roberts house in the legendary gold town of Cripple Creek, Colorado. This image demonstrates that simple means didn't stop people from enjoying the finer things of life, and one wonders what tunes these men produced with their violin and flute. The image also provides an introduction to next week's blog, which will be on the theme of "Characters," in which we will get a good look at some of the colorful personalities recorded in our vast photo database.

If a picture speaks a thousand words, our online collection of photographs is a vast library of stories, enough to fill many an hour.

To see more of the many tiny houses we have pictures of, do a search for "cabins." A search for "miners" will also produce a long list of fascinating images.

And be sure to visit our "Tiny Houses" gallery.

Sometimes, browsing through our photo database, a photograph stands out at first glance, simply because of its composition, dramatic lighting, or overall pattern. On closer inspection, it's details can almost seem like an afterthought to its initial impact. Here are a few of those kinds of photos.

The first image is an interior view of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, in Pueblo, Colorado, taken by Raphael G. Wolff sometime in the late 1950s. The florid title, provided by the photographer, fits the painterly content of the image, and reads: "Ribbons of gold under slanting ribbons of sunshine, the metamorphosis of steel wire is completed. Toilfully, man and machine will pull fat steel rods thru graduated holes-stretching rod steel into miles of antenna-like wire."

The second example is a picture of boys at a playground in Thornton, Colorado, taken by James Legget in 1976. This image caught my eye immediately because of the great contrast, repeated forms and regular patterns. Only on closer inspection do the boys show up, like  "Where's Waldo" characters, lost in all the dots and lines.

The circles, lines, lights and shadows of a kiva at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico were captured by one of Mesa Verde National Monument's first Superintendents, Jesse L. Nusbaum, in about 1912. In addition to the dramatic composition of a few simple, contrasting shapes, because the image was recorded on a glass plate negative, gorgeous detail emerges on enlargement, using the zoom tool. A close-up of Julian Martinez, of the San Ildefonso Pueblo, is an entire photographic experience in itself. Our database contains over 350 of Nusbaum's images, crystal clear captures of the beautiful and mysterious Anasazi cultural legacy.

A tour of striking images would scarcely be complete without something from the inimitable Harry Rhoads, photojournalist, adventurer, and visual artist par excellence. Harry was the lead photographer for Denver's Rocky Mountain News for over 60 years, and entire exhibits and books have been dedicated to his work. So many of his pictures qualify as "striking," that finding a single sample was difficult only in having to eliminate so many more good ones. We have over 2,300 Rhoads images in our database, many more than can be appreciated in a single sitting. This night view of a fire at the Barnett Building on 16th (Sixteenth) and Larimer Streets in  Denver, in February 1932 is a perfect example of what a good photojournalist does: record the dramatic events of the time.

One of the most photographed locations in Colorado in the late 19th century was Royal Gorge - the spectacular 1,250 deep granite canyon of the Arkansas River near Cañon City, 10 miles long and at places only 50 feet wide. There are so many pictures of "Hanging Bridge," a favorite spot, that they could form a whole database of their own. Here is a striking look at a side canyon, from a glass plate negative by the team of Rose & Hopkins, landscape and portrait photographers based in Denver. The almost 650 Rose & Hopkins images in our database document a wide cross-section of images: people, events, and landscapes, all fascinating windows into the past.

The 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco was in part, the city's effort to show the world that they were coming back strong from the devastating earthquake and fire of 1906. Visionary exhibits beckoned spectators to a glittering future full of sparkling electric lights, and idealized utopias with names like: The Tower of Jewels, Palace of Horticulture, Court of the Universe, Court of the Four Seasons and the Court of Abundance. Among the many spectacular constructions was the Bernard Maybeck Palace of Fine Arts, which stands to this day and is a breathtaking example of Classical Revival architecture. This image shows the Western Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande, Missouri Pacific, and the Iron Mountain Railways "Scenic Lines of the World" exhibit at the Palace of Transportation, and is typical of the fantastic scenes designed to awe the throngs of visitors. A search for "exhibitions" results in over 200 fascinating examples of what made people go "Wow" in the old days.

Glass plate negatives, the state of the art in the 1890s, when they were done just right, could provide almost as much detail as today's digital cameras. One disadvantage of this technique was that it required a long exposure time, and so it was used more for landscapes or still life photography. Another disadvantage was that the entire process of preparing the negative, exposing it, and developing it had to be done on the spot, within about 15 minutes. This meant the photographer had to have a portable darkroom, chemicals, and all of the other equipment at his fingertips and ready for use.

Some photographers, notably William Henry Jackson, among all of his other work, actually made many spectacular glass plate images deep in the Grand Canyon, hauling his gear down the trails on a donkey in the desert heat - but that's another story.

This image of the Metropolitan Building in Denver, by L. C. McLure (MCC-1614), is one of the some 4,200 McClure photos in our online database, and it displays the characteristic near-microscopic detail, expert composition, and contrast that makes his photos so desirable.

But it also has some interesting anomalies that become visible using the online enlarging tool. Taken in 1911 or 1912, when the automobile was gaining ascendancy over the horse and buggy, the extended exposure time has captured some of these early vehicles in the middle of the parking process. So, not only does the photo show a brand new downtown office building and a bunch of great old cars, it shows us some ghostly evidence of the bustling activity that made Denver just as exciting then as it is now.

Explore the photos of Louis Charles McClure in our database, and take advantage of the zoom tool to find all sorts of interesting hidden details that give a flavor of life a hundred years ago.

In our collection of some half a million photographs, many of them have nothing at all written on them, front or back, and we have to do research to find out where and when the photo was taken.

In some cases, sometime during the last 70 years, someone simply guessed, and put the photo in an envelope that matched their guess. In other cases, someone who owned the photograph before the Library owned it guessed, and wrote something on the back of the picture, or in the margin.

When we began the Photo Digitization Project back in 1995, part of our task was to create a detailed catalog record for each item that was to be scanned, and we still do this. This information includes everything we know about the photograph, what is written on it, and what our research has shown.

In many cases, we were able to fill in the blanks by comparing the photo to others, by matching a business name in the photo to an old city directory, or by looking at mountains or surrounding landmarks. In other cases, we were stumped, and the photo entered the database as “unidentified,” or worse, misidentified.

In the early years of the project, one difficulty we had was that photos took a long time to go from being scanned to being online and searchable. It was difficult to research a photo using our own database, a problem that happily, we no longer have.

Now, with our online database fully operational, we have a new and powerful tool to identify these photos. That tool is the public – the end users of the database. Among the millions of eyes perusing our collection, many have caught problems, and we are happy to make the corrections when we find out. Quite often the corrections are obvious and require no further corroboration – and this is the story of one.

This photo of the Park Congregational Church in Greeley, Colorado, had “Granite, Colorado” written on the scrapbook page it was glued to, and the cataloger gave it that title – as is our protocol.

Recently, a customer noted that in comparison to our other photos of Granite, this image appeared to be somewhere else entirely. Using the database as a research tool, we quickly found other photos of the same building, searching with keywords “church,” “bell tower,” and “windows.”

One remarkable feature of the building was the final proof: the bell tower is at a 45 degree angle – an unusual feature that matched our other two photos. Of our three images of this building, this one is the best, and it’s a great feeling to have them united as they should be. The image now is correctly titled, and the incorrect information from the album page is recorded in a note.

We value customer feedback, and welcome opportunities to “fine tune” our database. If you find discrepancies or information that you think is incorrect in our photo database, please contact Western History Staff and we will look into it. Countless people scouring the photos and doing their own comparisons is a powerful editing process that our staff could never achieve, and we are more than happy to incorporate these corrections, no matter how small.

As early as 1873, Curtis Street in Denver was “the place to go” for theatrical entertainment. Names like the “Governor Guards Opera House,” “Forrester’s Opera House,” and “Walhalla Hall” conjure memories of the vaudeville, opera, and variety shows that drew people from around the country to Denver, “Queen City of the Plains.”

Famous personalities like Sarah Bernhardt, Mrs. Fiske, Red Skelton, Fred Astaire, and the great Enrico Caruso trod the boards of Curtis Street, dazzling everyone from Denver’s elite to mountain miners looking for some culture.

When Denver’s City Auditorium was opened in 1909, the city made national history by being the first to conduct municipal theater. The city maintained a regular season of entertaining events at prices all could afford. At the heyday of Curtis Street’s theatrical excitement, there were, between 16th and 17th Streets on Curtis alone – some six or seven theaters.

The electric thrill of bright lights at night on Curtis Street brought people from around the world to witness “the best lighted street in America,” which was the only thing like it for at least 1500 miles in any direction. To people used to country life and quiet small towns, coming to Denver to stroll down Curtis Street in the evening and take in a play, movie or vaudeville show was the thrill of a lifetime.

Long gone now, “The Great White Way” remains only in photographs, newspaper articles, and books, all housed in the Western History Department or available in our internet databases. Though much different today, night life in Denver is still the most excitement of its kind between Chicago and Las Vegas, even without Milton Berle or Jack Benny.

The storied Hayden Geological Survey of 1871 not only vastly expanded our knowledge of the American West with a detailed and precise atlas of the territory, it joined the talents of some of the greatest visual artists of the era: William Henry Jackson and Thomas Moran. The atlas itself is a work of art; in addition to the standard topographical maps, there are numerous bird's eye view and sectional details that are simply stunning. The crisp and sure rendering of mountains and eroded red rock landscapes is a triumph of technical skill.

The Hayden Survey explored a wide area, including the region of northwestern Wyoming that later became Yellowstone National Park in 1872. It was the first federally funded  geological survey to explore and document the territory, and it played a prominent role in convincing the U.S. Congress to pass legislation creating the park.

Now, the Denver Public Library has brought 18 of our pages from the Hayden Survey online, and they are included in our Digital Images collection in high resolution scans with amazing detail. 108 of William Henry Jackson's photographs from the survey are available as well, and we also have several great books on the subject. Start with "Strange Genius: The Life of Ferdinand Vanderveer Hayden," by Mike Foster [C550 H324zfos].

You can study the maps online for valuable historical information or simply for their beauty, or just come up to Level Five of the Central Denver Public Library and peruse the actual maps in our fascinating, treasure packed Western History Department.

A person can spend hours browsing the seemingly endless supply of great photographs in our database. There are so many images, that time allows a browser to stop and go more deeply into only the most eye-catching of all of the thumbnails.

Even using the larger thumbnails available in the "Display Options" dialog, there are details that emerge using the zoom tool that could easily be missed by a passing glance.

This 1939 contact sheet print of a shepherd in a field didn’t look too impressive in the little thumbnail, but for some reason I decided to zoom in and found graphic art gold. The unknown photographer didn’t have a zoom lens, but because this photo had a high resolution in its initial form, the perfect stock photos of lambs and a shepherd were revealed.

Designers, decorators, businesses, authors and all kinds of people have acquired prints of our images that focus on a particular detail: a person, a house, a business, a horse – the list is endless. Our expert and flexible photo lab can crop, enlarge, and print all or part of an image any size up to 50 inches.

Remember that detail will only emerge with an image that has a high resolution in its actual, pre-digital form. If the detail is there using the online zoom tool, then it will also appear in the print.

Here’s a link to the shepherd photo: http://bit.ly/106iTyJ

Here's our price list, print size availability, and other details about getting prints of our photos.

Happy Browsing!

Our vast photo database is filled with treasures of every flavor. Architectural firms, real estate photographers, and inspired amateurs have captured countless unique and dramatic moments in Denver’s diverse architectural history, and for fans of stark contrast and daring lines, it’s hours of fun.

Charles Deaton’s 1965 design for the Commercial Federal Bank is a familiar landmark for millions of people, because once you’ve seen it, you don’t forget it. A confection of ‘60s futuristic fantasy, the 32 foot high, 10,000 square foot concrete ellipsoid is a sibling to Deaton’s even more famed “Flying Saucer House” in Genesee.

William Muchow’s First Federal Savings and Loan building is captured in another of Lloyd Rule’s first class portraits, at night, it’s lighting emphasizing the simple, clean lines.

The Morris Miller house showcases the California Modern, or Eichler Style, with its shed roof ceiling, inset lighting, and theatrical round settee.

Browse terms like “modern,” “moderne,” “interiors,” or explore the works of Lloyd Rule, who made thousands of photographs of buildings through the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Colorado modern architects like Deaton, Muchow, Heartling, Baume, or Gordon White are all represented in our collection. Don’t forget to follow the linked subject headings in the records, too, because it’s a great way to uncover new surprises.

For the Second Annual Booklover's Ball in 1999, the Denver Public Library Friends Foundation commissioned twenty three acclaimed children's book illustrators to design ceramic plates celebrating libraries and reading.

A number of the artists were recipients of either the prestigious Caldecott Medal or the Caldecott Honor Book Award for Excellence in the field of children's book illustration. The variety of delightful images testifies to the top-flight talent that was engaged for the benefit of the Denver Public Library.

The plates were displayed at the Ball, and then at the Schlessman Family Branch of the Library. During some remodeling at Schlessman, the plates are being housed with the Library's art collection, which is currently undergoing a thorough inventorying and cataloging process. Now, thanks to our new ContentDM software, images of the plates have been added so people can enjoy them online, along with many other pieces from our art collection.

The Denver Public Library Friends Foundation has been giving support and assistance to the Library since 1940, through advocacy, activities and programs, fund raising, and the management of private monies raised by or donated to the Library or to the Friends Foundation.

Here's a link to the Plates; here's a link to the online part of our art collection, and here's a link to the Denver Public Library Friend's Foundation.

Sometimes the only thing to say is "Wow." Lloyd Rule's promotional photos for Green Mountain Townhouses in Lakewood, Colorado, capture the mid-60s style in all it's glory.

The helmet hairdos, garish colors, and bubbly sexism tread the thin line between historic and anachronistic, and show another tiny, amazing corner of
our vast, amazing collection.

To see all eleven photos, follow this link Green Mountain Townhomes.

Don't miss the Hot Tub shots!

One of the Library's treasures is a set of glass plate negatives taken by Edward Boos on the Flathead Indian Reservation in the Flathead and Missoula valleys of Montana in 1905. These negatives, according to Western History Department legend, had never been developed or printed since acquired, in the 1930s, until they were scanned in about 1995. Prints were made from the scans, and sent to the Reservation to get first hand information from the descendants of the people in the photographs for our catalog records. According to a 1935 newspaper story, many of these portraits were developed at night under a canvas cover so the photographer could share the portraits directly with his subjects.

Many more of Boos' photographs, and his personal records, are held at the University of Montana-Missoula, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, including copies of some of the Denver Public Library's images.

Aside from the remarkable story of these photos, the images themselves are breathtaking. Most of them were taken in situ, that is, in the actual places these people were living, in their own clothing. [Many posed studio portraits of Native Americans have them wearing clothing kept in a wardrobe and randomly assigned to the sitters, without regard or concern for the historical accuracy of tribal dress].

In addition, the incredible clarity of glass plate negatives can be fully appreciated immediately, online, using the magnifying tool, without waiting to get a full resolution print from our lab.

In the portrait of Joe Lamoose [BS-13], he is holding a "Pipe Tomahawk." These ritual weapons were a combination of two opposites: a hatchet for splitting skulls, and a Peace Pipe. The Native Americans were sensitive to the thin line between an enemy and a friend, and this implement was a constant reminder of the gravity of what being a warrior really meant.

Search for "Boos" in the Library's Photo Database http://bit.ly/SM2Hk4, and you can peruse the 129 scans we have online, and see many more rich stories than what are shown in the samples here.

Our collection includes some 340 photographs taken at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City, Colorado - and talk about "double takes," the human drama imparted by these images is at times quite arresting, pun intended. Staring intensely into the camera, prison inmates communicate their resentful submission to their fate as convicts, or barely contained fury at being caught after attempted escapes.

Built in 1868 before Colorado was a state, Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility - known as "Old Max" - received its first prisoner in 1871,and has housed such famous criminals as Alferd Packer, Colorado's cannibal, and later, Ted Kazynski - "The Unibomber."

Convicts in prison stripes and shackles walk in lock step, epitomizing the concept of "chain gang." Dramatic lighting illuminates unforgiving steel and concrete cell blocks, and handlebar moustaches hearken to days of long ago, when discipline included corporal punishment on the "Old Gray Mare."

Collapsed, burned roofs and blood on the floor give silent testimony to the 1929 riot, which took the lives of eight guards and six prisoners. Convicts mill in the yard during a lockdown,  and the prison psychiatrist bristles with tension in his position as confessor to the unwilling tenants of his domain.

We see a man being strapped into the gas chamber, in a glowing public relations demonstration of the equipment, used for the last time in 1967. Emotion fills the face of a man with a visitor, and a woman kisses her pet bird by the bars of her cell.

Among the photos from the Prison in the database, many are more disturbing than those shown here, and as a group they tell all kinds of stories about the inmates and the keepers in Colorado's famous "Old Max."  

Cañon City's prison is featured in numerous movies and books, and we even have photos of prisoners watching a sneak preview of a romanticised interpretation of their own lives.

Victoria R. Newman's excellent 2008 book "Prisons of Cañon City" is richly illustrated with photographs, many of which are also in our collection, as well as numerous previously unpublished images drawn from the Museum of Colorado Prisons collection.

Silver Dollar Tabor's 1911 "Star of Blood" also features Cañon City's prison, in its fictionalized [some would say "sensationalized"] biography of convict Allen Hence Downan. This gem in our collection merited its own blog entry, several months ago.

The Library's collection includes all kinds of materials, books, and photographs that can provide a deeper look into this fascinating corner of Colorado History.

"That leaves only me to blame, 'cause Mama tried..."

Sometimes when I look at my desk I feel overwhelmed - then I remember this picture by the amazing Harry Rhoads and get a little lift. He was always able to get a smile out of people - and he had an excellent eye for framing and lighting a photograph, not to mention telling a story. As "Denver's Phototographer" for more than six decades, Harry Rhoads knew how to take a picture.

Thomas Torlino, a Navajo Indian, demonstrates in these before and after pictures the change he underwent in the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Looking at the untamed, vibrant and creative human in the first image, and the domesticated, neutralized citizen in the second [linked below], I'm reminded of lines from Chief Seattle's famous speech:

"There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory... Your destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires.

    Where is the thicket? Gone.     Where is the eagle? Gone.     The end of living and the beginning of survival."

Thomas Torlino "survived" Carlisle Indian School, providing us with a lesson - through these pictures we can peer into the past and catch our own glimpse of the "secret corners of the forest."

Thomas Torlino before and after Carlisle School, photos by John N. Choate, 1848-1902. 

People have always known how to have fun getting dressed up, and Harry Rhoads was a photographer who knew how to capture people having fun. Here's a picture [RH-5917] of cowboy star Tom Mix with a couple of admiring flappers. Here's the Wikipedia bio on Mr. Mix:

Thomas Edwin "Tom" Mix (born Thomas Hezikiah Mix; January 6, 1880 – October 12, 1940) was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. Between 1909 and 1935, Mix appeared in 291 films, all but nine of which were silent movies. He was Hollywood's first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed.

Tom Mix was "the King of Cowboys" when Ronald Reagan and John Wayne were youngsters and the influence of his screen persona can be seen in their approach to portraying cowboys. When an injury caused football player John Wayne to drop out of USC, Tom Mix helped him get a job moving props in the back lot of Fox Studios.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Tom Mix has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street. His cowboy boot prints, palm prints and his famous horse Tony's hoof prints are at Grauman's Chinese Theatre at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard.

Here are some of the many contemporary cultural references that have been made to this early Hollywood icon.

In 1967, Mix was featured with many other 20th century celebrities on the cover of The Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In Woody Allen's 1983 film Zelig, archival footage is shown of Mix attending a party at Hearst Castle near San Simeon, California.

In The Beverly Hillbillies, Jed Clampett's reason for going to Beverly Hills was to live in the same place as Tom Mix.

Tom Mix is mentioned as being a pall bearer and weeping at the funeral for Wyatt Earp at the beginning of the end credits for the 1993 George P. Cosmatos film Tombstone.

In the Doctor Who episode The Gunfighters, the TARDIS lands at Tombstone, Arizona in 1881, where the Doctor says he doesn't understand why they want to dress like Tom Mix.

In the series Bewitched in the episode "Serena's Youth Pill," Darin tries to convince young Larry Tate to drink the magic antidote by telling him it would help Larry grow up to be a cowboy like Tom Mix.

Love the hat, Tom!

With the thousands of images I see every day, using the '3 second rule,' if I find myself needing to look at a picture any longer than about 3 seconds - I'll share it. This one is titled "The Kermis," with no other information. Some research revealed that "kermesse" is from a Dutch word meaning a Church fund raiser. There are several photos in our database that come up with the search term "kermis," all of groups of people in costumes. This one includes some blackface makeup, which is not considered Politically Correct today. Some people collect images of this kind to illustrate the blatant stereotyping people used to engage in without thinking about how dehumanizing such behavior is.

The Western History Department continues to yield surprises as we sift through its treasures. This Rose Parade program was an insert in the Pasadena Star News, one of several we have. The colorful cover promises more excitement than what's within, a dutiful documentation of numerous flower-covered parade entries in tedious, tiny, black and white halftones.

The annual festival of flowery floats, marching bands, and equestrians on New Year's Day was first held January 1, 1890. [The Rose Bowl college football game was added in 1902 to help fund the cost of staging the parade.] These parades were popular around the country, and the Western History Collection holds several hundred Horace Poley photos of flower-bedecked horses and buggies in Colorado Springs from the same era. Hints of the Rockies show in the fact that the Tournament of Roses Parade follows Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena's main thoroughfare and a segment of the former US Route 66.

1935, the year of the cover shown here, was one of the darkest years of the Great Depression. It was the 45th year of Pasadena, California's Tournament of Roses Parade, but it wasn't dark enough restrain the splendor of "America's New Year Celebration." Muriel Cowan, the 1935 Parade Queen, recalls:

"I can still inhale the fragrance of the roses. One of my fond memories is receiving a letter from two boys in Shanghai. It seemed almose unbelievable that people so far away could hear about our parade. At the game I recall Dixie Howell of Alabama thumbing his nose at the Stanford team as he ran down the field for a touchdown."

The winning float for 1935 was "The Jay and the Peacock" from Santa Barbara, a floral depiction of seven peacocks which turned from side to side. Seven men inside the sixty-five-foot-long float manipulated the moving birds and were in continual communication by built-in telephones.

1935 was the first year that commercial floats were allowed, and the end of the "younger days" of the Parade. In 1936, there was a huge influx of Texans for the Stanford-Texas football match, and from then on, the entire event moved up a level in crowd size and intensity.

In that year, Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California, the Dust Bowl swept over the Southwest, Fibber McGee and Molly debuted on NBC Radio, Executive Order 7034 created the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed in a plane crash near Barrow, Alaska, and the Nuremberg Laws went into effect in Germany.

1935 was the peak of the Marathon Dance fad, where people desperate for food and possible prize money would endure as much as 1,638 hours (about two months) of near nonstop dancing as they did in a Spokane show. From the depths of the Depression, colorful glimpses of the excitement and fantasy of the Rose Parade in the Sunday paper provided a much needed escape.