Sunday, March 11, 2007

More Downtown Denver



Late last month, I posted some pictures of public art I took in Downtown Denver. Today, I decided to upload a few more I took that day. The first one above is the Denver skyline near the main library, looking across Civic Center Park. The City-County Building (City Hall) is out of view to the left, and the Capitol building is out of view to the right. This photo looks north toward the heart of the city.

The tall brown building in the background to the left that has a white sign on it is the headquarters of Qwest Communications (Click the photo for a larger view). It is at 1801 California Street, and was once called Mountain Bell Center, then after the AT&T Divestiture in 1984, was the headquarters of US West, which was acquired by Qwest. I used to work in that building from 1997-2000. The top of the smoky grey building just in front of it was once called Anaconda Tower, then it became Qwest Tower when it housed the headquarters of Qwest before it merged with US West.

The tall building on the right with the rounded top is commonly referred to as the Cash Register Building. It has no cash register company inside, but if you were standing on the opposite side, it somewhat is shaped like the top of an old fashioned cash register (that would be a manual point-of-sale terminal for you younger readers!). The white, shorter building in the middle is home of The Denver Post.

The next photo is the south side of the main library building. This is a very unusual building, as it looks like several different styles and colors all attached together. This side of the library faces the Denver Art Museum complex.



The Denver Art Museum has some very distinctive buildings. The next two photos are part of the museum's downtown campus, known as the Civic Center Cultural Complex.



This really unusually shaped building is the Frederic C. Hamilton building of the Denver Art Museum. Look closely at its base, and you will see the whisk broom and dustpan sculpture I posted in a photo in my posting of February 24.



Remember our friend, the Big Blue Bear sculpture that peers into the Colorado Convention Center? The photo below was taken near him. He would be off to the left. The Convention Center complex is very large, and much of it is new. The Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) has light rail tracks that go beneath part of the center. I like the architecture of this building a lot. It was part of a major expansion of the Center in recent hears.