If you are determined to preserve a dilapidated old building against the owners’ wishes and at their considerable expense, the first thing you must do is act as if you have embarked on a mission of throbbing importance. When seeking a landmark designation for a building you don’t own, for example, you should describe it in the breathless style of Hiram Bingham stumbling upon Machu Picchu.
Consider the landmark application for a 103-year-old warehouse a few blocks northwest of Coors Field, filed by two residents of a condo across the street. It presents its case with these stirring words: “In the summer of 1858, a small group of prospectors from Georgia crossed the great plains of the Colorado Territory and made a region-changing discovery at the base of the Rocky Mountains. Gold. It wasn’t long before tents, tepees, wagons … lined the banks of the South Platte River,” and triggered the birth of Denver, “as we now know it.”
And what does this have to do with a decrepit warehouse built more than a half century later? The applicants were just about to tell us. You see, the Mine and Smelter Supply Company warehouse “had direct association with the historical development of the city, the state, the nation and, indeed, beyond.”
You’ve got to appreciate the insertion of “beyond.” The next thing you know, they’ll be telling us the warehouse qualifies as a World Heritage Site, too.
This attempt to impose landmark status on a warehouse whose owners wish to tear it down and put up apartments is a striking abuse of Denver’s historic preservation process. Almost any century-old warehouse or office building involved in one of the city’s early trades had “direct association with the historical development of the city” and the state. Yet clearly, not all of them could or should be saved.
Ah, but this warehouse is supposedly special because the Mine and Smelter Supply Company was founded by Eben Smith, a notable 19th century banker and mine operator. One problem, though: Smith died in 1906. If you want to preserve a building as part of his legacy, this isn’t it. He never saw it.
Nor does the warehouse qualify, despite what the application says, as having “a prominent location” or as being “an established, familiar or orienting visual feature of the contemporary city.” Unless you live in the recently renovated Prospect district near the stadium, you’ve probably never seen or heard of this warehouse. You may not have seen it even if you live a few blocks away, since it sits at a dead end of Huron Street next to railroad tracks. It has been abandoned and isolated for decades.
Now here’s the strangest part of the story: The applicants may actually succeed in thwarting development (a development not so different from the one they live in, ironically). The city’s landmark commission has already voted in favor of landmark status for part of the structure (at 3019 Huron) and will consider another section Tuesday (3011 Huron). From there, it will go to the City Council.
If you stand inside the warehouse, the first thing you’ll notice is that it’s a wreck. Not only are there gashes to open air in the roof, there also is literally no south wall at all: It was demolished, along with another section of the warehouse that city staff ruled was not historic some months back.
Even odder, the remaining building is split between two owners but the divided property isn’t separated by a wall. So the commission next week is literally considering landmark status for an address that has only two walls and whose roof and a third wall are in utter disrepair.
The front facade has plenty of old-brick character — oh, yes — but since when is that a landmark criterion?
If the City Council wants to preserve the integrity of the landmark process, it has only one option: Let the warehouse — or rather, the rest of it — come down.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter @vcarrollDP.
