Urban Orphan

In southern Colorado is a county named Huerfano, a word that means "orphan" in Spanish. About sixty miles north of the New Mexico border off I-25, you can't miss the county's namesake: Huerfano Butte. This lone volcanic plug lies east of the highway among scattered sagebrush and yucca plants. It seems lonely, lost on the prairie, far removed from the lofty peaks to the west.

Another 150 miles north of Huerfano Butte, a busy, bustling street cuts through the heart of downtown Denver. Broadway is home to our finest old hotel and is one block distant from the city's tallest building. As Denver grew, a good number of its original buildings fell victim to progress, demolished to make way for skyscrapers and modern edifices. But there remain many historical places mixed in among the sterile, gleaming towers of glass.

One such place sits near the corner of 20th and Broadway--busy street in front, light rail train station at the rear, three diminutive stories dwarfed by towering luxury condominiums--an urban orphan far removed from its contemporaries.

Using a configuration common at the time, the exterior walls were designed to make best use of space on a wedge-shaped lot. Looking at the building from the rear it seems unremarkable, plain, with three square sides. But standing at the northwest corner, the triangular walls appear much like the pointed end of a large slice of architectural pie.

It may not have a fascinating background chronicled in newspaper archives. Its facade is not likely to be featured in the western history photographic collection at the Denver Public Library. Yet 1980 Broadway has a past I cannot forget.

Some time after my family moved to the Denver area, my grandfather followed to be near his youngest daughter and son. For a while in the early sixties he lived at 1980 Broadway, where we visited him from time to time. A trip to downtown Denver from our quiet suburb was always an adventure. I remember peering out the car window as we passed buildings no more than four or five stories, inconceivable heights to a little girl used to living in a small ranch-style home.

Even now I can close my eyes and be transported back in time to the boarding house where grampa lived.

Through the front door is the lobby and a dark, smoky sitting area with decrepit furniture, upright piano shoved against the staircase wall. The steep staircase heads straight up one side of the building. Grampa's apartment is at the very top of that dark, forbidding stairwell.

Such a tiny living space! The first thing you see is the sofa bed, then a small table and chair in the corner. Turn left into the tiniest kitchen you could ever imagine, and through another doorway is a bathroom with windows that open onto the most incredible part of his apartment: a fire escape!

My brother and I loved to crawl out the window to that fire escape. Mom and dad would visit with grampa while we indulged ourselves in imaginary New York City-type scenarios on the tiny metal balcony, the likes of which we had never seen before.

Grampa came to live with us before he died. Mom told me that he missed his apartment and the city, where he could walk several blocks to Civic Center Park, meet up with other elderly city dwellers, and talk about the old days while playing checkers.

I'm not sure how this particular building managed to survive Denver's march ever forward and upward. Now it hosts a Budget Rent a Car office, where this week we stopped to visit. The two young women working at the counter were friendly and interested to hear stories about a brief period in the building's history. They told us the upstairs rooms are sealed off, unused and in disrepair. We peered up the dark staircase and saw a mess of cracked, peeling plaster and rickety stairs.

Then came the best part of the day. "Did anyone ever tell you if the building is haunted?" one woman asked. She said that one day she was alone but felt a hand on her shoulder. Another time she witnessed her office chair spinning on its own. Both women have discovered cabinet doors in the back office hanging wide open not long after they were closed.

Whether or not you believe in ghosts as I do, the stories are fun to hear. So I told them my grampa's name, Evan, and said next time something happens... and on the off chance it is him... just say hello.

Now when I pass the building, it won't seem so much like an orphan.