(soft upbeat music) - [Matt] I love the downtown and just walking the
streets of downtown, to see the buildings
that have survived. The Mining Exchange Hotel. - [John] The Pioneers Museum. - [Leah] The City Auditorium. - [Tim] Lowell School. The Cheyenne Building. - [Matt] The Maytag
Aircraft Company Building. - [Leah] The Colorado
Springs Day Nursery. - [Matt] Historic architecture is really the tangible evidence of who we are as a community. - [John] The landscape
of the built environment tells a story, it tells
us about who we are, it tells us about our values. We need those stories. - [Tim] Historic preservation
is based on the notion that change is inevitable, but with effort you
can shape that change. (soft upbeat music) - [Announcer] This
program was made possible by the History Colorado
State Historical Fund, - [Presenter] Supporting
projects throughout the state to preserve, protect
and interpret Colorado's architectural
and archeological treasures. History Colorado
State Historical Fund, create the future,
honor the past. - [Announcer] With
Additional funding provided in memory of
Deanna E. La Camera, by Hassel and Marianne Ledbetter
and by members like you, thank you. With special thanks to
the Denver Public Library, History Colorado, the
Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media and
to these organizations. (soft upbeat music) - We have to remember that there have always
been people here. We often think of
Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak region
as a cultural crossroads, and that recognizes the
fact that people have lived in the shadow of
Pikes Peak for eons, including the Kiowa, the
Comanche, the Arapaho, the Cheyenne and the
Apache, the Ute Mountain Ute and the Southern Ute. (instrumental music) - [Leah] As white settlers
came on a more permanent basis, the Utes were removed
from Colorado, post 1879. The Cheyenne and Arapaho were first placed on
a reservation in 1861 and then later removed to
the Oklahoma Territory. - [Matt] You can see
those cultural traditions reflected in place
names, Cheyenne Mountain, Uintah Street, Kiowa
Street in town. And that's just one way
that we can remember the people that have
been here before us and are still here now. Colorado Springs was
founded July 31st, 1871 on a short grass prairie, built on this idea that we were a beautiful place
with great scenery, close proximity to the mountains
and a wonderful climate. (gentle music) - Tourism and creating the West as a part of the American
icon happened here. - We relied tourism, that
was our greatest industry. We commodified our beautiful
natural scenic environment, our healthy, clean air,
our sunshine filled skies. - [John] And we have used
that to market the city from the earliest days, as a sort of original, wealthy
getaway tourist resort. - [Matt] You can see that
we were a tourist community through the Alamo
Hotel, the Acacia Hotel, through other historic
structures that serve tourists who arrived here either
by car or by train. - [Leah] And people came, but it was a pretty sleepy
town for the first few decades. (gentle music) [Matt] The first major change that happened to
Colorado Springs is driven largely by
the discovery of gold. - [John] Because of the
Cripple Creek gold mine strike in the 1890s, there was a huge injection
of wealth into the city. [Matt] It gives us some of our most important
city benefactors, Winfield Scott
Stratton, Jimmy Burns, Spencer and Julie Penrose. - Members of the Gilded Age expected to display
their wealth through construction
of fine residences, the endowment of
schools, hospitals,
different institutions. - [John] A lot of that money went into building some of
our most famous buildings, many of which are gone now. - In the late 1890s,
early 20th century, there is literally a
mushroom-like growth of important
historic buildings. - [Matt] Largely located in the downtown historic
core of the community, the Mining Exchange building,
the Independence Building, (gentle music) the Post Office. (gentle music) - Plans began to
build a new City Hall and a new El Paso
County Courthouse that were fitting
for a community that was so important
to the state's economy. We're actually sitting
right now in the bell tower of the historic 1903 El
Paso County Courthouse. This building was meant
to represent all the gold that was coming down the
hill from Cripple Creek and resulting in a city that
was richer than ever before. (gentle music) New, luxurious
homes were built in suburban residential
districts like
the Old North End, so Wood Avenue was
dubbed, "Millionaire's Row." Architects like Thomas
MacLaren were designing homes that you could find in
Pasadena, California, or in New York, gorgeous,
gorgeous luxury residences. Thomas MacLaren creates
a blend of architecture that's sympathetic to
the Colorado climate and the environment. He builds villa style
homes and churches and schools that have red
tile roofs, organic lines, curved, soft edges. And the Broadmoor
became a suburb that wealthy people
flocked to as well, and then soon enough we have the incomparable Broadmoor Hotel, a place that drew tourists
from around the globe. (intense dramatic music) - [Matt] We have evidence
left in the built environment of these millionaires who
called Colorado Springs home. And today we can get
a sense of their lives and their lifestyle by
visiting the
Julie Penrose House, which is on the
National Register and located adjacent
to the Broadmoor Hotel. (intense dramatic music) When you look at what
properties have been listed either on the State Register
or the National Register, a lot of the properties are
on Colorado College campus Shove Chapel or Palmer
Hall or Lennox House. - [Leah] The Colorado
Springs Fine Arts Center, designed by John Gaw Meem, is truly one of the
most beautiful buildings in Colorado Springs. John Gaw Meem is famous
for his work in Santa Fe. He helped create the
Santa Fe aesthetic. He was brought here to
build a state-of-the-art, temple of culture. And it is a beautiful
adaptation of a
Southwest design but using really
modern materials. So it's concrete, but
it's Pueblo revival. They added little,
tiny pieces of gold into the concrete mixture, so that that building
is truly of this place. - I have a personal
affinity for the Van Briggle Memorial
Pottery Building. It's got a very European flair, the architect,
Nicolaas van den Arend, designed several structures
in Colorado Springs that have been listed. Dutch Revival is the
design of the structure, it's a brick building that has
used a lot Van Briggle tile. It was designed to
honor Artus Van Briggle who created
Van Briggle Pottery
along with his wife, Anne. He died of tuberculosis. To understand this place,
you have to understand TB. TB, at the time Colorado
Springs was founded, was one of the leading
killers in the country and around the world. And because we are a high,
dry climate with lots of sun, where you can essentially
be outdoors
12 months of the year, we actively marketed
ourselves as a destination for tuberculosis patients. - [Leah] So we
commodified ourselves as an elite health resort. - [John] A place to come
with curative powers. - [Matt] Many of the
homes in the Old North End of Colorado Springs, were
built during that era. And so, they have
sleeping porches built into those structures, which were specifically
designed to spend as much time in
fresh air as possible. You can also see, if you know what you're
looking for around downtown, TB huts. And they were
specially designed by a physician named
Charles Fox Gardiner, as a way to isolate patients, but also to have them get
fresh air and to be sheltered and be cared for. We have one in our
collection and on exhibit. (intense dramatic music) - [Leah] There were
upwards of anywhere between 15 to 18 TB
facilities at any one time, dotting the landscape
surrounding Colorado Springs. - [Matt] The sanatorium
movement leaves significant
evidence on our landscape in the form of former hospitals. Some of them have
been repurposed, and it's kind of like an onion, you can just peel
away the outside and you can see other evidence
of our community's history. (gentle music) The University of Colorado
at Colorado Springs was built on a
former TB facility. Cragmor Sanatorium was
renovated by the university, they saved some of the facade, but the building itself
was dramatically changed to the extent that
it was delisted. I'm very interested
to see what happens as the former Union Printers
Home site is developed. (gentle music) - [Leah] The Union Printers
Home was the world's largest tuberculosis care facility
for Union members. For printers who had
contracted a type of
tuberculosis known as printer's lung. - It's a great structure that hopefully can find a new
and improved and modern use, but retain the
historic architecture. (gentle music) TB really comes to an end, at least that treatment
method comes to an end, at the end of World War II, when new chemical
treatments are developed. Sanatariums close. - Chamber of commerce and
local businesses leaders began to look for
new economic drivers. - [Matt] And at that point, the army was looking
for a new training base, and we actively went out
and recruited the military to come to Colorado Springs, we offered them land
south of downtown, we offered other incentives
to bring the military here. - [Leah] And that was Camp
Carson, later Fort Carson. That really began to change the
economy of Colorado Springs. From the 1940s onward, we're looking for
military opportunities to bring an infusion of
federal dollars here, and that radically
alters our landscape. - We then actively go out
and recruit the Academy. (soft upbeat music) NORAD is built under
Cheyenne Mountain. Peterson Air Force Base becomes
home of US Space Command. Schriever Air Force Base is a significant home
for satellite technology. And so we have these
five major defense installations
in Colorado Springs, and now there's talk
about the Space Force being housed here. At a time when our
economy was changing, could no longer rely
on tuberculosis, the military was
what we turned to. And it was that
change in our economy that had such an
extraordinary impact on who we are
as a community. You can really see the
change that happens after World War II. We have historic images
from Nevada Avenue, looking west on
Pikes Peak Avenue, one of the most
important cross streets
in Colorado Springs. Today that corridor, which for decades had a
very similar look and feel, is just strikingly different
than it was historically. And I think it should
be a lesson to us as to what value historic
preservation can have. (soft upbeat music) From 1900 to World War II, Colorado Springs kind
of hovers in terms of
its population, and we range from about
30,000 to about 50,000. (soft upbeat music) After World War II,
all of that changes, our populations begins
to increase dramatically, doubling about every decade.
So does our footprint of the city of Colorado
Springs boundary. We begin annexing
new properties, new open space for
housing developments. What was this fairly
compact little town, up until World War II,
begins to sprawl tremendously to today, where we're I
think 195 square miles, about a fifth the size of
the state of Rhode Island, which is just hard
to think about. (soft upbeat music) - [Leah] Unfortunately
what that means is the downtown inner
core begins to decay. - [Matt] In the post-war years
from the 1950s to the 1970s, downtowns were having to
go through reinvention because of changes
in the economy and flight from downtown
to suburban areas, the growth of malls, etc. Urban renewal is a
movement that happened across the United States
and in Colorado Springs. In an effort to
revitalize urban cores, the urban renewal movement was largely related to taking
down historic structures, old businesses, and raising
up new, modern buildings to replace them. There were many
historic structures
lost to urban renewal. - The reason stated, and this was typical
across the country, was, they were obsolete. Oftentimes, the
standard response is, look, it's cheaper just to rip
it down and build a new one, and we did a lot of that
in Colorado Springs. - Our urban renewal effort was called the Colorado
Springs Urban Renewal Effort, which got the acronym CURE, which is always an interesting
acronym for me because, you don't need a cure
unless you have a disease, and the disease that
Colorado Springs had was urban blight. - [Leah] Local governments
essentially declare certain sections of
downtown to be blighted and bring in federal dollars
to rebuild, reimagine, wipe away the past, and
build new buildings. -[Matt] And the way to do that was to take down whole blocks
of historic structures. - [Leah] And those blocks encompassed some
important businesses, some legacy businesses. - When you look at
these neighborhoods which were declared blighted, no coincidence,
where were they? African American, Latino,
minority neighborhoods, and we see that in
Colorado Springs. In the downtown,
which used to be the historical
African-American neighborhood where there was a
lot of people living, but also a lot of
independent businesses, including probably
the most famous, the Cotton Club of
Fannie Mae Duncan, all those were ripped out. - Fannie Mae was the catalyst for the peaceful integration
of Colorado Springs during the very volatile
civil rights movement. Here in Colorado Springs, Fannie Mae was serving
people of every ethnicity who would come in because of
their mutual love of the arts and sit side by side
to enjoy the evening. The city decided that the
area where she had her club, really was becoming seedy, and they didn't want all
the important businessmen and the money coming
into the city, getting the
wrong impression. So by 1975, eminent domain
was the decision by the city to get rid of the club and tear down the
buildings in that area. - [Lenora] They did a
closing of the Cotton Club. People were crying because,
we had no place to go. I remember Fannie Mae coming
through, and she says, "I'm sorry," you know, when she got up and made her
announcement, she just said, "I'm sorry, there was
nothing I could do." - I regret that they
closed the Cotton Club down because it was my idea to
pass it down to the family. After I'm gone, it
would still be there to go down to my family. - So urban renewal is tinged
with partition ideas about what buildings
should be preserved and what buildings need to go. It is a solution to some and
it's an assault to others. (gentle music) - [John] Particularly
in the 1960s and 70s, they were ripping down a
lot of the urban fabric. One of my favorite buildings was the Colorado
Springs High School, which is now
Palmer High School. It was a great
Richardson Romanesque, cut sandstone building
with a big tower. (gentle music) - [Matt] The building
that I mourn the most was the second Antlers Hotel, which was torn down
in 1964 and 65. The first Antlers Hotel
burned to the ground in the 19th century, (gentle music) was replaced in 1901. - [Leah] A gorgeous
building reflecting an era of Colorado Springs'
Golden Age of tourism. (gentle music) - And unfortunately that beautiful
historic structure, which today would be seen as
a landmark for our downtown, was seen as too
expensive to modernize, and there was a desire at
that time in our history that newer is always better, and so that building was
lost to urban renewal, and the current Antlers
Hotel that we know downtown was the replacement for it. There were other buildings
that were lost in this era that really motivated public interest in
historic preservation. The Burns Opera House, later
known as the Chief Theater, was also added to the
National Register, but torn down by
private property owners in order to make way for what is now essentially
a parking lot. - [Tim] It was a
marvelous building, it was beautifully
constructed, there were no
interior pillars. - [Leah] It was a
building beloved by generations of Colorado
Springs residents. - The tax code favored
new construction over rehabilitation and
so they demolished it. (gentle music) If we could have
that theater today, it would be a tremendous asset to the city
of Colorado Springs. - [Leah] And when that
building was destroyed, when it was torn down, our
community was embittered. - [Tim] Leading the
community to advocate in 1983 that there should be
a historic preservation
ordinance, to protect historically
significant properties. - And so, the historic
preservation movement came out of this demolition
of historic properties and buildings that
had helped to shape the downtown for decades. (instrumental music) We're proud at the Museum
that this building, the 1903 El Paso
County Courthouse, was really the first
intentional effort
in Colorado Springs to save a building
for historic preservation
purposes. It was the first structure
in Colorado Springs added to the Register in 1972, really just a short time after the passage of the National
Historic Preservation Act, which created the
National Register. Because of urban
renewal efforts, it was threatened
with demolition. - They were right
across the street at the Alamo Hotel,
ripping that one down, next one on the block
was this very building. If it weren't for a outrage
by local citizen activists, this building would have
been ripped down too. - [Matt] The community
rose up and decided that they'd lost enough
historic structures
in the downtown area, and there was a public will to see that this
building would survive. - [Leah] And to be
reimagined as something new, and that something
new was as a museum to house the
community's history. - [John] This building itself is one of the best
in the city, it's our architectural jewel. Same thing happened on the
west side, Old Colorado City, in the 70s, it was
gonna get ripped down, if it weren't for a lot of
local neighborhood activists, they preserved it
and stopped it. And now it's a great space,
it's a very successful place. Urban renewal
still exists today, and it's very much a part of how urban development is
done even in Colorado Springs. - It's a way to add new
properties and new businesses using tax incentives that are
available to property owners. Today though, I would say
that urban renewal is done in a much more
sensitive approach than what we've had
in the past. An example of that is a new
hotel that's being built, situated in between the listed
properties of City Hall, the YWCA building and
our City Auditorium, and it's being placed in a
site that is a good balance of historic preservation
with urban renewal. There is newer interest
from private interests that there's business sense
in saving historic buildings. An example of that is
the Ivywild School, which went through
rehabilitation and took a historic school
that was going to be torn down and turned it into a
modern gathering place that relies on history to give it its sense of
purpose and uniqueness. The Mining Exchange Hotel, a wonderful
preservation activity to save the old Mining
Exchange building and turn it into a
modern hotel. That effort also resulted
in the preservation of the former Municipal
Utilities Building, which is one of our
few art deco structures in Colorado Springs. So today, it's
really a shared role between the public sphere
and the private sphere in preservation efforts. (gentle music) In 2019, Colorado
Springs approved as part of its overarching,
comprehensive plan for the community, a new Historic
Preservation Master Plan called HistoricCOS. What it recommends is that
we see the role, the value, the economic purpose of
historic preservation for this community,
that we do a better job of communicating what
historic preservation means to neighborhoods and to
private property owners, and that we provide
tools to them that can help to encourage
historic preservation. A conversation that's
being had in the community is about the bandshell
in Acacia Park. We heard loud and clear through that master planning
process that it's valuable, it's important to keep. So, what we have
committed to as the City of Colorado Springs is to figure out how we can
save the building itself, but make it still useful
as a performing site. Historic properties
are tangible evidence, they're something that you see every day on your
drive to work or when you're out
for a walk. - It's really powerful
to think that your grandfather
or grandmother walked down that same street. - It provides a wealth
of context and character. - This historic structures are kind of
in-your-face reminders that this community has
been around a long time, has gone through changes,
but we're still here, we're still growing, we're still becoming the
community we're going
to become. And having that evidence
of the past is critical to creating a sense of place, a sense of community identity. (gentle music) (soft upbeat music)
I love the "Colorado Experience". I'm gonna watch this tonight. Thanks for sharing
This is one of my favorites. Helps explain why we're a Zone I state for radon. Don't forget to test this winter!!
That was well worth watching. Thanks for posting it.
Cross posted.
Awesome find -- I'll be watching this this weekend!
Check out the Facebook group old pictures of Colorado springs They have some great content