Colorado Experience: Spencer & Julie Penrose

you in Japan Rose was very much an entrepreneur very outgoing very flamboyant and the ultimate promoter a drinker a carouser a playboy the black sheep of the Penrose family who goes west and has often happens makes his success of himself Spencer Penrose is known for always wearing riding outfits he carried pearl-handled revolvers and wrote a white horse so like so many of these rags to riches prospectors who came to Colorado he came here with relatively little and ended up making it a gigantic fortune Colorado experience is a co-production of Rocky Mountain PBS and history Colorado history Colorado brings history to life for audiences of all ages through exhibits collections and historic preservation programs throughout the state history Colorado connects people to the stories places and heritage of Colorado's past that provide perspectives on today and inspire our choices for tomorrow find out more at WWDC Loret org additional funding provided by l poem our Foundation and the Boettcher Foundation celebrating 75 years of philanthropy in Colorado with additional funding and support from these fine organizations and from viewers like you thank you the story starts back in Philadelphia where he was born into a very affluent prominent family there he came from a very wealthy and well-connected family at a brother was a senator another one who was a very famous physician another one who was a general and he was asked ion of this this wealthy and influential Philadelphia family all of his brothers went to her word one of them a u.s. senator boys Penrose was prominent in selecting Harding president in 1920 Spencer Penrose like all Penn roses went to Harvard he happened to graduate last in his class that's also at Harvard he did get into rowing he was no good on academics but he was big on rowing on the river there and one day he accidentally knocked out an eye he actually had one of his eyes damaged by a polo accident I think it was in a crank in an automobile with the crank and the crank backfiring he lost his eye so he had a he had a glass eye in a cocktail parties that was great fun to pop out your eye and show it to people but he had two glass eyes one that was clear and one that was bloodshot he had different class eyes depending upon his state of mind so he had bloodshot eyes for mornings and he had clear white eyes for evening he had no interest in staying in Philadelphia being part of the family tradition he started to work his way out west when we understand his father gave him $2,000 and said spend it and then you'll come back well he ended up in New Mexico on a fruit and vegetable farm he ended up working in a copper mine in Utah even was in the mine in Arizona they Arnie is some of these mines that he had jobs that he would ultimately own interests in Spencer Penrose came to Colorado in the early 1890s a little bit later than the first wave of migrants into Colorado he came after the great Creek gold strike of 1890 the richest Gold Strike in Colorado's history about the time he ran out of money he was busy with his brother dick Penrose and this is the about 1891 and his brother said by the way Charlie Tut your friend from childhood is living in Cara Springs and has a real estate business and mining has just been discovered in a place called Creek and you might want to go up and visit him his family after a period of time indicated they simply had had enough of it they wanted him to come home and they really were going to help him out anymore and he literally took the last money yeah and sunk it into a mining operation in southern Colorado it's two of them decided to go into the gold mining business together they formed a partnership type in Rose real estate my great-grandfather loaned on the $500 for the capital and mr. Pender was never paid him back the timing couldn't have been better because my great-grandfather just bought a mining interest called the Co demon cash-on-delivery it happened to be in an area called Poverty Gulch and just a few months before a guy named Bob Womack a cowboy had discovered gold in Pebble Creek and so the ultimate outcome is the co team I was across the valley from the Womack mine they worked it for about six months and then sold it for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars which is a lot of money in 1897 to a French syndicate and from what I understand filled up with water and a wet summer the next summer and they were never able to pump the water out and they never got much gold out after that so it was probably good timing on their part so they make the first I think half a million dollar mine sale in Creek then they get into land investments at one point they realized the success on mining wasn't finding the gold but was actually getting it out of Creek he not only got into mining but into smelting and that huge Colorado City smelter started out as the philadelphia and colorado smelter so basically if you want to get your gold ore out of Creek you had two choices process with the AU Carlton mill in Creek or Penrose and Tut operation and Carlos Springs came in city of Florence but where he really makes his money is he's smart enough to get into copper they formed the Utah copper company in 1904 they bought up all of Bingham Canyon and they started my knee the couple or so all during the Depression all during the wars particularly he's selling copper and making a fortune and with that fortune he builds up Colorado Springs first thing he does there is build a Broadmoor hotel in 1918 still one of Colorado's great luxury hotels if you look back when he built the Broadmoor hotel he just didn't want to build another hotel he had originally tried to acquire the Outlets hotel from the estate of general Palmer and unfortunately general Palmer's legal counsel a gentleman named Belle he wanted $250,000 for the you know where's mr. Penrose offered him 50 mr. Belle came down to seventy eight thousand dollars mr. Penrose did not budge so in the end mr. Penrose him a letter told mr. bill that I will not accept your offer and I will build the finest Hotel car springs has ever seen the Broadmoor hotel for arguably Colorado's finest hotel and luxurious in every way because Penrose really wanted it to be the best hotel in Colorado but mr. Penrose did everything with fine boyens when he built the Broadmoor Hotel starting in 1916 finishing it in 1918 he wanted the people on the East Coast and the west coast to appreciate everything he was doing so the architects he hired were named Warren and Wetmore they had just finished Grand Central Station in New York and they had built the original Biltmore Hotel so everybody in New York and Philadelphia knew who warned Webb more the landscape architect he hired was a firm called frederick law olmsted who had not many years before it finished a nice Park in New York City called Central Park the artisans who actually painted the ceilings in the main hotel were the same artisans of paying the ceilings in Grand Central Station so mr. Penrose wanted everybody who came to college Springs to feel like they in Philadelphia or New York or San Francisco but with the beauty of Pikes Peak and Colorado as their backdrop but he opens this hotel in 1918 in the silicon of Colorado Springs and nobody comes here you have this huge grandiose hotel the very few customers so he starts developing tourist attractions he buys off the Pikes Peak the cog railway beefs that up to give people a right way to get up Pikes Peak the track is equipped with a rail which fits into a driving gear beneath the engine and assures a safe means of locomotion also you can take borough rides up there Manitou and his fellow feasts of burden make their living by hauling people over the well-known mountain trails that lead from the summit to various points of interest on Mount Manitou they have made each trip so often if they know every foot of the way and when given plenty of rain we'll take you there and bring you back without a word from the he owned the gray line tours he owned the taxicab company he pretty much was the primary promoter of Colorado Springs pietà an elephant deserved as his caddy on the Broadmoor golf course which was one of the great early golf courses in Colorado and you could have this elephant serving as your caddy he used to keep the elephants in the paint bonds of the Broadmoor garage which is a cross through from the hotel but once one of them broke out and was running down Lake Avenue and so the neighbors told him he had to move them and so in the early 20s he built most women when he built the shine mountain zoo in the 1920s really is a promotion for hotel guests of the Broadmoor one of the first elephants he bought he named Tessie Tessie happened to be the name of one of the more prominent prostitutes in Creek and so we don't have any proof of it that there is some stories that name that was familiar to there was even a period where he had seals in the Broadmoor lake and he finally had to get rid of them because they cut poaching food from the hotel guests and then when the hotel guests would say no they would just take it from and so the guests complained that the seals had to go to the zoo and then he had the resources to invite the famous hoteliers from the coast out here for these week-long extubated in the early and mid 20s promoting the Pikes Peak region is a place for them and their patrons to come to Colorado a lot of the people who've come to love Colorado and move here for part of the year first came to know about Colorado through visiting the Broadmoor prohibition was the the last great victory of the reforming and impulses of the 19th century going back to the mid 1800s advocates of prohibition had been working state-by-state to regulate and ultimately prohibit the consumption and manufacture and distribution of alcohol it was seen as a threat to domestic life having a drunkard husband threatened the income of the family threatened the well-being and security of the family led to wife beating and child abuse and ultimately to prison and insanity and early death and so an excessive alcohol consumption was seen as one of the great evils of American societies but prohibition ran up against a major problem it was an attempt to regulate social behavior very accepted social behavior - although reformers were able to build up public opinion to prohibit alcohol on a national level by 1919 very quickly people began to see the problems of regulating or prohibiting a behavior that most Americans were willing to indulge one of Spencer Penrose this greatest political roles was in advocating for the repeal of prohibition he was appalled at the federal prohibition on the production and consumption of alcohol legend has it that he kept caches of alcohol in abandoned gold mines underneath the swimming pool of the Rodman hotel in the Philadelphia Athletic Club where he still had his old membership hides a lot of it in the basement of the Broadmoor every time they expand the Broadmoor hotel they run into a cache it moves and if you go down to the Broadmoor today through the tavern you'll see bottle after bottle lining the walls in the Broadmoor all of which has been drunk in Spencer Penrose his library he had bookshelves that would roll out from the walls and have stairways that go down into the basement in the basement supposedly is where he kept all of his prohibition liquor and so he would close the doors to the library pull back the secret panels in the bookcases and go downstairs and find the liquor that he had had imported to Colorado and use that for his evening meetings he was a very staunch advocate of the repeal of prohibition to bring attention to it here you got Spencer Penrose in the early thirties riding around a little cart in downtown car Springs with a sign on both side of it opposed to prohibition being pulled by a llama it was quite a spectacle and it was really inappropriate for Spencer Penrose to be riding around in this funny little buggy but that was his point he was trying to make as a prohibition was bad for the people it was bad for the hotel and it was bad for business Congress repealed prohibition in 1933 during the Roosevelt administration you know during the Great Depression I think Spencer Penrose would agree Americans really needed to drink one of the wonderful things about Spencer Penrose was the traditions he brought from Philadelphia the cookie Club which still exists is one that was a copy of a club in Philadelphia were people who were active in civic and community activities got together periodically and foster to climate I think that improved the civic climate Spencer Penrose had a very close relationship with many of the business leaders from Denver Spencer Penrose created a men's dinner club called the cooking club up on the side of Scheid mountain below the showing Mountain Zoo it was made up of 20 members from Denver and 20 members from Colorado Springs and they would come down here once a month for dinner and wine and cigars and they weren't to discuss business strictly for social mr. Penrose was now quite successful so he started to turn his interest to other things one of them being he's now an eligible bachelor in his mid-40s perhaps he should consider getting married well there was a fine lady who had already gotten that idea before them that was Julie these years Macmillan who was the daughter of the mayor of Detroit and she had come out to Colorado Springs because her husband had contracted tuberculosis and he ended up passing away so Julie had her daughter Gladys and they lived in cars brains they chose not to go back to Detroit and very quickly Julie started to pursue Spencer Penrose but she was quite a lady so she did it in very formal and proper method mr. Penrose being an eligible bachelor was known for not having very good breakfasts not I'm very good lunches and consuming dinner with quite a lot of alcohol on occasion and so he had the habits of a single guy and so Julie's had her cook come over to his house and on a regular basis make him his meals and so she was very slowly getting him to appreciate the finer things in life which had never really been much of a priority of his he was on a trip to Europe and coincidentally she was on the trip to Europe and they say it was it was strictly by accident but I suspect they had planned it but it was very proper back in that period the other thing that was a big deal is Spencer had to get the approval from his parents to get married even though they were very elderly he was in his 40s and while they have hoped he would marry a young single eligible woman not a widower with a daughter but Spencer Penrose did everything his very own way and so he married Julie the years McMillan she kept him in line and he had visions he was a promoter he tried to make sure that he was doing a lot of things for the first time whether it's the road up Pikes Peak whether it's the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo whether it's a Broadmoor hotel he loved people he loved to be out there but he had that Governor on him that was his wife Julie Julie Penrose saved Spencer Penrose for all his sterling qualities he was something of a rake somebody who lived the high life and probably would have dissipated himself and probably would not have spent as much time thinking about the good of people around him if not for the charitable instincts of his wife Julie Julie was very sweet very soft very feminine and I think controlled him very effectively never any public disagreeing but her public argument or what not she appreciated the finer arts Symphony opera and I think he was still that single gentleman even though he was married for many years Spencer and Julie Penrose had different personalities I think Spencer was very was very focused very driven he knew where he wanted to go and he knew how he was going to get there and if somebody blocked the way he was going to find another way to achieve what he wanted to achieve and Julie was probably more artistically concerned in the sense of the cultural amenities that were also important to a community based on her upbringing in Detroit and so the two really while Spencer may not have stopped to smell the roses quite as often Julie reminded him that they were there he built the shrine to Will Rogers on the top of Cheyenne Mountain one of the really beloved American figures of the 1920s and 30s and a close personal friend but originally he built this great tower with the Campanile E and a bell tower up top and wonderful murals throughout it it's a great mind he was like a hundred feet tall towering over the Broadmoor and over Colorado Springs it's on Cheyenne Mountain up above the zoo he built that for himself Julie Penrose says it looks kind of egotistical don't you think when Will Rogers dies in that plane crash with that wall-e post in Alaska he had had Will Rogers there to the Broadmoor I think he can't vitalized Will Rogers whose everything Penrose wasn't Penrose was a quiet very conservative secretive Republican Will Rogers of course was the great humorist a spokesperson who said I'm not a member of any organized party I'm a Democrat so there were different all kinds of ways but I think they bonded and so when he dies they turned that into the monumental well Rogers instead of the my name - Spencer Penrose Rogers numerous last friends friend or mankind recognized the obligations of good citizenship and lived accordingly as I his principal life in Revere his memory described as a son gangaiah mountainous my tribute to Will Rogers a memorial designed to keep alive forever the inspiration of a bigger marriage Julie put a lot of money into restoring the Central City Opera House also bought up houses down there for the stars for the day so you can get big-name stars and whatnot to come to Central City because they're getting free housing and a cute little Victorian cottage way up high in the cool Rocky Mountain a great escape from New York or Los Angeles for the summer and Julie we have largely to thank for much of the money that made the Central City Opera possible the philanthropic spirit that lives on today in Oakland our foundation well we don't really have any records I really think it started with Julie you have to understand Spencer Penrose built a Broadmoor hotel in 1918 he was still actively investing in mine interest he was traveling all over the world he still was a businessman a promoter and you know one of the best salesmen in the state of Colorado and the Pikes Peak region you could ever find she used to actually go to the boys club and meet with the boys and to give them quarters and money but support them and encourage them to improve their lives sure a lot of those boys that were tending the Boys and Girls Club had parents that also probably worked for the Broadmoor or worked in the community and just could not afford any other way of daycare support for the kids so she was always a good supporter of youth through the boys club Julie was a very staunch Catholic who believes strongly in the social gospel of taking your good fortune and spreading it to others through good works and she used her good influences to shape penrose his sense of philanthropy and put it to good ends without someone like Julie we would remember him as one of the great robber barons of Colorado perhaps she was one of the founders of that car Springs fine arts center she was a great patron of the Central City Opera in Central City Colorado and if you look at the early grant recipients from Central City to call it a college the Boys and Girls Club the YMCA and the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo most of them were activities that Julie was very much interested in she turned him from the Playboy into a philanthropist by creating albemarle Foundation which was the largest foundation in Colorado until the bill Daniels Foundation started just a few years ago and Yelp Omar was wonderful because it devoted itself just to Colorado Spencer Penrose left Philadelphia never went back ultimately came to Colorado Springs both Julianne Spencer adopted Cara Springs and the state of Colorado was their home and for the benefit of all of us they did that because their legacy continues to live on almost 80 years later Spencer Penrose the ultimate bon vivant was not only a great drinker but he of course fancied fine cigars and probably a cigar as it did him in he dies of throat cancer in 1939 Julie passed away in 1956 so she outlived him considerably he actually had suffered doubts with cancer in 1931 and then it came back in 1930 seven I suspect that Spencer Penrose created el Plomo foundation partly because he knew with the second bout of cancer that he needed to figure out what he wanted to do with his estate he had no children his wife Julie McMillan Penrose had that one daughter but an area account in Luxembourg and so it was no longer living here anymore and so he had to figure out who he is going to leave his money to he was the last surviving member of his generation his other brothers had passed away prior to him and he really had no connection to Philadelphia so for the great benefit of the people of Colorado he decided to leave his money to help him our foundation and only gameid grants in the state of Colorado nothing went to Philadelphia I really look at it as a gift and it was the gift that Spencer and Julie Penrose left to the state of Colorado like so many Colorado millionaires and he found it within himself to take the Fortran he made and give some of it back for the good of the people his memorial service when he passed away in 1939 was actually up of the Will Rogers shrine which he had built in 1934 to honor will Rogers but it's really the burial place for Spencer and Julie Penrose they were both cremated and buried up there but instead of an elaborate service he had his personal lawyer a denver lawyer named Henry McAllister stand up in front of all the people after a carriage took his casket all the way up the shine mountain highway and he stood up in front of all the people and read four lines from a poem by Tennyson entitled crossing the bar and he read these four lines life's race well run life's work well done life's victory won now cometh rest and then the service was in two Colorado experience is a co-production of Rocky Mountain PBS and history Colorado history Colorado brings history to life for audiences of all ages through exhibits collections and historic preservation programs throughout the state history Colorado connects people to the stories places and heritage of Colorado's past that provide perspectives on today and inspire our choices for tomorrow find out more at www.yearsyoungernaturally.com

Channel: Rocky Mountain PBS

Views: 16,964

Rating: 4.7684212 out of 5

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Id: QfX4Rf7JNDU

Length: 27min 2sec (1622 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2013