Itap a spaceship. No, itap a giant egg. Itap a … historic landmark?
The Charles Deaton-designed ovoid bank building at 3501 S. Broadway in Englewood leaves an imprint on those who gaze upon it — just like the architect’s other eye-popping Colorado building, the.
“You never forget it,” said Diane Wray Tomasso, a historic preservation specialist and Englewood resident who ushered the building onto. “Itap the shock of it. It looks like something – still – out of the future. And yet it fits completely within the scale of the buildings downtown.”
The bank turns 50 this year — a point at which buildings typically become “historic.” It’s also a milestone that will be observed with a public open house on Thursday.
The celebration comes at a time when Englewood officials encourage protection of more historic structures in the 114-year-old city.
The City Council in April passed an ordinance establishing Englewood’s first historic preservation commission. That body held its inaugural meeting Aug. 18. It reviewed the city’s preservation codes and wrote up rough drafts of its by-laws and a mission statement, city staff liaison Kerry Babin said. The commission will eventually establish a formal process for local landmarking.
Though not appointed to it himself, no one likely is happier about the formation of that commission than Doug Cohn. A founding member of the , Cohn has lobbied the city for the past few years to create a body dedicated to preserving all the “cool stuff” in town.
“I am pleased we have taken this first step,” said Cohn, who with his preservation society compatriots has spent years looking for a permanent local history museum location in town. (They’re still looking.)
Tomasso said historic preservation be catalytic for a local economy. She has worked to preserve historic (mostly modern) structures in the Colorado since the 1990s.
She noted that the historic stretch of South Broadway in Englewood — which includes many buildings built long before 1967 — is seeing a The one-of-a-kind bank serves as a visual anchor for the area.
“I think the main contribution that historic preservation makes to a community — and we’ve seen it in downtown Littleton, we’ve seen it in LoDo — it creates a kind of center where this whole entrepreneurial group of people can rise,” she said, noting older structures are often smaller and cheaper to rent. “This downtown area, itap just a great opportunity for Englewood to revitalize itself and help out a whole generation of new business entrepreneurs. And help us preserve South Broadway.”
Cohn has lived in Englewood since childhood. He remembers laying eyes on the bank for the first time when home from college on Christmas break in 1967 and thinking, “What the heck is that?”
“It was controversial when it opened,” he said. “It was so radically different than anything.”
Originally built for the local Key Savings & Loan Association, the building was the second bank Deaton designed and built, following the similarly freaky Wyoming National Bank building that opened in Casper in 1964.
The Englewood building has changed hands several times since then but has always remained a financial institution, according Judy Riley, a project manager for Community Banks of Colorado, the building’s current owner.
Working in a concrete structure has it quirks, Riley said. Heating and cooling can be challenging. The building has unique advantages too, she said. For one, Deaton’s design allows tons of natural light to illuminate the space, and for another, it attracts plenty of interested passersby just curious to set foot inside. Riley knows the feeling.
“I grew up here all my life and I never set foot in her until 11 years ago when I was hired and it was like ‘Yay!’ ” she said.
Community Banks of Colorado is partnering with the Museum of Outdoor Arts and the , a longtime tenant of the building, to host Thursday’s open house. People are welcome to drop in 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Museum of Outdoor Arts has a Charles Deaton exhibition running through Sept. 22. It features his two banks and the “Sculptured House” in Genesee that Woody Allen’s movie, “Sleeper,” made famous. The show includes a loop of a TV interview Deaton gave in the 1960s explaining his unique method of sculpting his designs in wood, plaster and clay then bringing them up to human scale with cutting-edge methods.
Tomasso will be at the bank from 2 and 4 p.m. Thursday talking about the building and the architect. Thanks in part to her work, the bank is one of eight Englewood structures and places that now appear on the national register,
“I really thought we needed to have a consciousness-raising session in town on the quality, the importance and the meaning,” of the bank, Tomasso said. “I think this particular period — the period right after World War II — is a time when there was a lot interesting exploration going on in modern architecture.”
