Denver's 1908 Democratic National Convention opening act

Site of '08 Dem meeting hosted Caruso, the Klan

By Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 8, 2008 at 9:45 p.m.
Updated July 8, 2008 at 11:58 p.m.

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Courtesy of Auraria Casa Mayan Heritage

Postcard shows the Denver Municipal Auditorium, "seating capacity 12,000."

Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky/2005

The Ellie Caulkins Opera House, which opened in September 2005, was built inside the renovated Quigg Newton Auditorium.The name honors "Denver's first lady of opera."

Caruso's clear tenor notes have resonated from its rafters more than once, along with the sharp dribbling of the original Denver Nuggets.

For decades, Denver residents filed into its cavernous interior to see the latest cars from Detroit and Johnny's high school graduation. They even came up to see Mae West.

But before Yul Brynner played the king of Siam on its stage or Vladimir Horowitz played Chopin on its piano, the Denver Municipal Auditorium was baptized by one of the biggest parties Denver had put on up to that time - the 1908 Democratic National Convention, 100 years ago this week.

In typical Denver braggadocio, the steel and brick masterpiece at 14th and Curtis streets was said to be the "second biggest" indoor meeting hall, surpassed in capacity only by New York's Madison Square Garden.

"The Denver Auditorium is the finest place in the world in which to hold a convention," noted John Martin, sergeant-at-arms for the 1908 convention. "In acoustic properties, arrangement of entrances and exits, seating capacity and everything, it surpasses anything that was ever seen either in Christendom or the glorious days of the pagans."

And setting a tradition for Denver public works projects, it was controversial, pushed by an ambitious mayor accused by foes of feathering the nests of corporate buddies. It was stalled by a lawsuit, opened barely under the wire and, by some accounts, cost twice its original $400,000 budget.

But almost immediately, and for nearly 50 years, this grand and aging building, now dwarfed by its neighbors, dominated Denver's physical streetscape and its social and cultural life, its first convention center.

Mayor Robert Speer opened the building to free weekly concerts that became the envy of American cities. For other events, Speer would pack the house and sometimes pay for admission of those who couldn't afford it.

"Anything big happening here, Mayor Speer would show up and help people get in," said Denver historian Tom Noel. He and Amy Zimmer authored a book featuring the auditorium, Showtime, released this week. It is a history of Denver's theater district, the performing arts and convention centers.

"Right away, the building became very popular," said Jack Finlaw, Denver's director of the Theaters and Arenas Division. "There was lots of activity and diverse programming."

In the 1920s it hosted a Ku Klux Klan rally followed by a meeting of the NAACP.

For many years starting in 1938, Denver hosted the annual Amateur Athletic Union basketball tournaments in the auditorium. Then other facilities came along to meet increasing demand - the auditorium arena next door, the coliseum, now-gone Currigan Convention Hall and McNichols Arena.

The auditorium has survived two substantial remakes. Today, renamed the Quigg Newton Auditorium after the Denver mayor who refurbished it into the Auditorium Theater in 1955, it is home to opera and ballet as the site of the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. The annex Auditorium Arena is the Temple Hoyne Buell Theater.

"We were basically creating the third act of a building that had already had two full lives," said Finlaw, who oversaw the transformation of the auditorium to the Ellie, which opened in 2005.

Remaining is the cornerstone on which Speer had two things carved. One, a seeming retort to the critics who tried to stop him from building it: "The people of Denver by popular vote commanded the erection of this building."

The second a Biblical quote from Isaiah that bespeaks the mission of the century-old structure: "Let all the nations be gathered together and let the people be assembled."

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