Starting up again!

I'm back on the project! Whew-hoo! It's been quite a few months, had some oral history consulting, job searching and trying to stay warm all winter in my cold house.

Today, I was down in Denver retrieving a lost sweater at Tattered Cover bookstore and I decided to mosey down to Lawrence and 19th Streets to investigate a view. I had the 1978 print, but haven't yet located the 1937 image, either in print or xerox format. This view (037) shows either the front or the back of Sunset Park--now owned by Volunteers of America--and Okner's Firestone shop. Okner's goes back to the 30's. It took quite awhile to find the right building, and it looks like Okner's is either a parking lot now or obliterated by a modern, large building. Meanwhile I'm hunting feverishly for the '37 image.

I am also editing my list of photographs. Since I took many of the pictures a year apart (separated by my gig on the railroad), I know that I duplicated some and may have missed a few others. In addition, I was given a bunch of small prints by the photograph librarian at CHS (who I succeeded in 1980), and apparently I didn't rephotograph those in '80. Ah well--so who knows what the streets looked like in 1978-80? The important thing is that I got the bulk of the project done.

My plan is to get everything organized in terms of paperwork and finish the photography this summer. I hope that Sam can join me again on a shoot. We'll do a few streets and then have lunch and a beer at the Wynkoop. (Wyan-koop, not Win-koop, folks.) I've developed a new love for downtown Denver--Denver in general--after commuting down to DU for awhile. Boulder's a great town but Denver's alive. I imagine some of it is nostalgia for the late 70's, but it's still a very different place.

I try to imagine the urban historians of 2100 and wonder what they will make of this project; hopefully it will exist. Climate change looms, of course...

That's a sad note to end on...I try to keep up optimism.

After this project who knows where I will go with photography?

Memories of Larimer Square--and other places

The other day I was thinking about how important the businesses in Larimer Square were to me in the mid- to late seventies. I mostly frequented the Flick, an "art" movie house; Josephina's Pizza/Italian Food; and the Magic Pan (crepes). Other than LS, the streets were really quiet and pretty scary at night.

Saw at least two great films at the Flick by Jacques Tati and Vittorio da Sica at the Flick ("Playtime" and "A Brief Vacation"). It was a place a young woman could go alone, even take a bus there from Capital Hill.

There was little to hang your hat on elsewhere in downtown Denver. For a short time period I swam and took yoga at the YWCA (torn down in the 1980's). Sometimes the Oxford had some good music (Norman and Nancy Blake, for example)--was it in the "Booze-Wazee" Room? I rarely went to Ebbets Field for music; the Folklore Center on E. 17th Ave. was of much greater interest. Couldn't afford Top of the Rockies restaurant. Occasionally shopped in May D&F bargain basement and the Denver. There was a food co-op on California Street in an old Safeway building that essentially got put out of business by the Rainbow Grocery, a production of Guru Maharaj Ji's people on East Colfax. Some of the same people who brought us Pearl St. Market in Boulder and also drove out a food co-op, and later the Alfalfa's/Wild Oats empire.

One other business stands out: Cafe Nepenthes, on Market Street. A coffeehouse/restaurant with a wholesome, welcoming atmosphere. I often went there alone. Occasionally I even stopped at the White Spot for coffee! But only after photographing in the railroad yards.

Having lived around Harvard Square earlier in the seventies, it was hard to get a handle on Denver. Cambridge had everything: coffee, food, books, photography stores, movies, evening classes, music--all within a few square blocks. Walkable. Lots of people on the street, particularly women. Don't forget the muffins...

Infrared film and the railroad

I've been pulling out my old photos of the yards from 1976-1978. Not documentation per se, but an artistic treatment of the area, trying to find beauty in a fairly utilitarian, often ugly place. Watching a coal train the other day make its way on the mainline through the Central Platte Valley, eclipsed and dwarfed by the lofts and other buildings, I got a hankering to do some more infrared work and catch the view of the diminished railroad in its "new" urban setting.

Kodak doesn't make infrared film anymore, just as the company knocked off Kodachrome this summer. But Rollei does, and not just in 35mm. 120 as well, so I can put my 1953 Rollei TLR to use again. It's such a great camera.

I'm excited, but wary; in truth, I'm not hopeful. The place is cluttered. Will the long rays of autumn make up for the lack of railroad?

A visit to a wonderful building on Wazee St.

This week I met with the owner of a building on Wazee, an old warehouse once used to store mining equipment, formerly owned by the Hendrie-Bolthoff company, which also owned buildings on Wynkoop St. (Wine-koop to the old Denver residents, or even Wy-in-koop). The building was designed by Frank Edbrooke, who also designed the Brown Palace, the Oxford Hotel, the Tabor Opera House, etc.

This was a revelation to me. A warehouse building designed by an architect?

Walking around LoDo later, I discovered a number of the signs that explained the history of the neighborhood's buildings. Indeed, many of the buildings were designed by architects, not just as warehouses but with corporate office spaces. The Wazee building sported some unusual features, including one of the largest freight elevators in the Western U.S. The windows are also much larger than in neighboring buildings, due to the support of steel beam lintels.

I asked what was there before the warehouses went up at the latter part of the 19th and the early 20th centuries. The speculation is small houses for railroaders and others who worked in and around the yards just adjacent. Houses that were highly vulnerable to Cherry Creek/South Platte flooding.

This visit opened my eyes to the necessity of bringing people into the picture, literally. As I have enjoyed Sam's photos of the skateboarder on 15th Street and the elderly couple crossing 16th Street a few Sundays ago, I realize there is indeed life in Lower Downtown and it should be documented. While there are still plenty of cars (that's Denver), it reminds me that I need to speak to people who work and live down there; who've done the renovations; and above all, remember the place before.

Stepping back from an earlier observation...

With the photographs of Wazee Street now developed and digitized, I am seeing something different in Lodo, particularly in Sam's images. His are playful, with people at the edges of frames, moving. People appear in 1937, but rarely in 1978. I'm thinking of his images of the Wazee Lounge. Mine, with the Retina I bought 40 years ago (!)--the camera that took the 1978 pictures--are static but fairly exact. His encompass the Lounge, part of 15th St., the pavement of the street itself, the Acme Building off in the distance (hello, Guy Noir), an African-American teenager moving quickly out of the left of the frame, and finally some cars moving quickly and a little randomly through the intersection. Bravo, Sam, for the vibrancy!

I always wait for people to get the heck out of the frame, but Sam includes them--like the elderly white couple moving into the intersection at 16th and Wazee.

OK, there are a lot of cars down there now, a lot of people walking around, some looking pretty rich. Lots of trees. To beat a dead horse, though, this is not the Denver I knew. Yet why doom a downtown to be a skid row neighborhood? Sometimes I think I liked it not just because of the Brooklyn memories, but because it was quiet, filled with isolated people if at all, and the same with the railroad yards. I'm pretty focused on the built environment and want that to stand out, but, like Sam, maybe now it's OK to let some people into my own pictures...let's see.

Earlier this week...

On 9/9/09, I walked Larimer, Arapahoe, Lawrence, Market and Wynkoop without the camera. Just wanted to see what was what. I started at 2:45 and ended at 4:45. After two hours my feet were exhausted from pounding the pavement.

Lots of traffic and new construction downtown and the air was icky. Surprised at the number of buildings pulled down on Market Street since '78-'79.

This time around we will photograph every street corner, whether photographed or not in 1937 or 1978.

The D&F Tower used to be a good landmark, but you can barely see it anymore.

Park Central still stands between Lawrence and Arapahoe, 15th and 16th. That used to be the headquarters of the Rio Grande Railroad. In 1977 I went to Park Central to apply for a job as a brakeman. I had to pass through airport-style security to get to the railroad. The building had been bombed during the Vietnam War years.

The railroad turned me down for a job, as did the Union Pacific. D&RG's reason was that my back "wasn't straight." (I had to go through a lower back x-ray). I do have a mild case of scoliosis. My father blamed my poor posture (in his opinion), but in reality one is born with scoliosis.

The real reason for the turndown was a letter from the Metro personnel office recommending me for a brakeman's job. The sender stated that the railroad would never discriminate against a woman, of course. So my fate was sealed: I was a potential troublemaker.

I did get a job on the Rio Grande later, though--in Pueblo. The various terminals--Denver, Pueblo, Salt Lake, Grand Junction--were independent, and hired as they liked.

A day of shooting

Today, Sam and I went down to Denver to rephotograph a few streets. We decided to do Wazee Street, starting at the intersection with Cherry Creek and moving up to 19th Street, just a block or two from Coors Field. A nice day, a beautiful day. We had lunch at the Wazee Lounge, where I used to hang out with my Metro friends in the late 70's. Looks different inside, but brighter because the 15th Street viaduct no longer darkens the street.

Impressions compared to '78-'79: Lodo is a busy place. Not having walked the neighborhood much over the last 25 years, I didn't expect so many cars, so many pedestrians on a Sunday afternoon. Perhaps Arapahoe and Curtis aren't that busy on the weekend; we'll find out toward the end of the project.

There is a lot more visual "junk" on the streets, i.e., parked cars, signs, parking meters, traffic light poles, new/old streetlamps, viaducts, people people people. These tend to obscure the field of the image! And have I gotten shorter? I'm using the same camera from 30 years ago and couldn't seem to back up enough. Luckily Sam had the wide-angle Canon.

One view was especially galling. The old Union Pacific building, 19th and Wynkoop, used to be very close to the tracks and the railroad yards. Now that the yards have basically been obliterated, a bus viaduct rises near the building and has made it impossible to get the same view as 19371978. Ah well. We were tired by then, and decided to call it a day.

A little kvetch: Denver is not my city anymore. I lived there from 1974-78 and three of those years were quite wonderful. Good memories.