— by Brian Shearer

B50 Note: Brian Shearer is a designer, cartoonist, and creator of Mr. Skully. As Brian mentions, the Denver Public Library has some great information on the areas cemeteries available online. Brian can be reached via email.

B50 Note: After 60 years of cutting hair at the same location on Colfax, Walt Young hangs up his scissors on September 30th, 2009. You can read more about Walt at 9news and the Denver Post. Walt Young’s digital story was produced by Daniel Weinshenker and the Center for Digital Storytelling in conjunction with the “Imagine A Great City” exhibit at the Colorado Historical Society. More stories from the series are available at the Mile High Stories website.

Father Joseph Hirsch (1944-2009) attending to a gravesite in the Orthodox section at Riverside (photo from the Denver Post)

It was with great sadness that we received the news of the death of Father Joseph Hirsch, who was the Dean of the Holy Transfiguration of Christ Cathedral in Globeville for the past 25 years. Father Joe was a fixture at Riverside, whether conducting a service or tending to the graves in orthodox section of the cemetery.

Father Joe, along with his wife Paulette, has long been a tireless advocate for Riverside, for the congregation, and for the Globeville community.

Both Father Joe and Paulette have supported the efforts of the Friends of Historic Riverside through their advise, their membership in our organization, and by allowing our group to use the community hall at the church for our annual meetings.

Among his other accomplishments, Father Joe was the driving force behind the Orthodox Food Festival and Old Globeville Days, held in Argo Park just across from the church, an event that uses the best food at any festival in Colorado to bring visitors to their neighborhood.

Father Joe was also a regular at community planning meetings, and could be counted on to advocate for a neighborhood that has been too often overlooked in the planning process. Though he was a fierce fighter for causes he believed in, he engaged each person with a unique combination of humanity and kindness.

Our deepest condolences go out to Paulette, the Hirsch family, their friends and the congregation of the Holy Transfiguration Cathedral.

More information on Father Hirsch and his family can be found on the cathedral website, www.transfigcathedral.org

— by Hugh Graham, originally posted on the Friends of Historic Riverside Cemetery website.

—By Patrick Stephenson

Although I was born in Denver and have lived in the surrounding area my entire life, I didn’t actually move to within city limits until 1999; the summer I turned thirty-eight. That same summer I met my wife, Donna, and a year or two later we met our friend John Henderson, a tall, slender African American man with a glowing character. We met because Donna and I walk our dogs together on a near daily basis, frequently to City Park, a journey that takes us by John’s storefront if we take the 21st Street route.

If you happen to peer in while passing by you can see his collection of imported African arts and crafts, and on the days he’s there (Friday and Saturday), with a closer inspection you can see John sitting in his frayed office chair reading a magazine, listening to the radio or chatting with one or more of his many friends. He’ll be eighty-eight years old this summer, but has the mind, body and spirit of a much younger man.

Before John opened his store (The African and American Trading Company) at 2217 E. 21st Ave., he was Denver’s first African American architect and the first licensed in Colorado. He worked for many prominent Denver architectural firms, including his first job with Fisher Davis & Sudler in 1959 (working on the Federal Courthouse), and Gio Ponti & Sudler (on the first Denver Art Museum). He worked on the Denver Botanical Gardens and a slew of other architectural gems in Denver.

In 1961 he designed a modern home for himself and his wife Gloria, which is near his store. The home is adorned with full height panels of glass and clean lines, reflecting the style of his favorite ‘master architect’, Mies van der Rohe. At the entry John has created beautiful window weight sculptures, and at Christmas he and Gloria assemble large mobiles of ornaments you can see through the full height corner windows.

John has been retired from architecture since 1981, and lives a much less complicated life at his store selling eclectic African art for two days a week. His store has baskets, carved wooden bowls, phone wire art, jewelry, and tribal dolls. He also sells some American art, and odds and ends such as assorted teas, nuts and maple syrup from Vermont. But he has said that the main reason he has his store is for the opportunity to engage with people who pass by, and those who, like me and Donna, come by routinely just to see him. It’s rather like a barber shop environment, where you can sit and swap stories, or just take in one of his stories from his long and remarkable life.

B50 Note: Patrick Stephenson is an architect who lives near City Park with his wife Donna and their dogs Waylon and Huck. You can find out more about his work at his website.

—by Mary Lou Egan

The story and photos occupied several pages of both the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. KOA Radio carried the broadcast live and a score of airplanes flew overhead. An estimated 100,000 people gathered near the site while an additional 250,000 watched the event from rooftoops and ridges all over the city. The occasion was the demolition of the Grant Smelter smokestack, a 350-foot remnant of Denver’s glory days of mining and smelting.

The giant chimney had been built in 1892 as part of an expansion of the Omaha and Grant, Denver’s largest smelter. It was the tallest structure in the region and a symbol of a time when smelting was the city’s largest industry.

A year after the completion of the stack, the nation experienced a depression that hit mining and smelting hard. Changes in technology, the depletion of rich ores and labor unrest brought the halcyon days of smelting to an end. The Omaha and Grant Smelter closed in 1903 and was gradually dismantled, until only the enormous smokestack remained. Neighborhood children used the stack as their private playground, riding their bicycles in and out, and daring each other to climb its steep walls. Retired fireman Ed Westerkamp was one of those kids. “We used to play around that old Grant Smelter stack.

There were a couple of ponds there and hills we could ride our bikes up and down.”
Various economic proposals for the giant chimney were made over the years, including its use as an incinerator for the city’s refuse. There were arguments for its preservation as well as for its demolition, but, in the end, issues of safety and economics won the day.

Sunday, February 26, 1950, was the day selected for the demolition. Officials and spectators began arriving at the site at 9 am and listened to speeches as preparations were finalized. The Denver Post eulogized the stack, “From its mighty mouth. . .spewed the smoke from rich ores that flowed through its smelter by the millions of tons.” Mayor Quigg Newton added, “I think we’re all sorry to see the stack go, but it was one of those things that had to be done.”

The crowd remained patient through delay after delay. Finally, at 5:00pm, Fred “Tombstone” Backus, a veteran powder man, turned over the detonator to Thomas Campbell, Manager of Improvements.

A second later a series of five blasts, each two seconds apart, exploded in the base of the 7,000-ton tower. This was the moment when the stack was expected to fall westward into a dump area. Nothing. It took three more blasts and “a million bricks crashed to earth and a blinding cloud of cement and dust enveloped the officials and spectators.” Half of the tower remained standing. Seventeen minutes later, as people were examining the damage, there was a rumble and another section suddenly collapsed. It would take more dynamite on the following day to finish the job.

Denver was pleased with itself for shedding its frontier image. The city was growing, with a modern interstate highway and sleek new buildings changing the downtown skyline. The city’s newest addition, completed and dedicated in 1952, would be the Denver Coliseum, replacing the smelter stack, a crumbling symbol of Denver’s industrial past.

B50 Note: Mary Lou Egan is a professional graphic designer and watercolor artist who also enjoys history and preservation, and writes and maintains the Globevillestory blog. Photos of stack courtesy of Janet Wagner. Photo of coliseum courtesy of Ian Denny.