A snapshot of history
The Auditorium, also known as Denver’s Municipal Theatre and Convention Hall was built in 1908 on the corner of 14th Street and Champa Street at a cost of $700,000 and seating for 12,000 people. A 3-story building with light sand-colored bricks and featuring corner towers topped with cupolas. The Auditorium at the time was the second largest in America, with Madison Square Garden in New York City being the largest. It marked the highlight of Mayor Robert Speer’s first term in office and his Denver’s City Beautiful movement.
The Auditorium opened July 7th 1908 and hosted the 1908 Democratic National Convention from July 7th to July 10th. It was the first national convention of a major political party in a Western state at that time. It wasn’t until 2008, a hundred years later, when the next Democratic National Convention was hosted here in Denver. As you can see in the image below it drew quite a crowd from around the city to come see the convention.
Over the years it held many events including theater, opera, conventions, sporting events (Basketball), exhibitions (The Fireman’s Ball), free weekly concerts, the circus and more. On December 8, 1916 Mayor Speer gave his famous “Give While You Live” speech, one of the many donations from this speech was the pipe organ that was located in the Auditorium. At the time it was the largest to be built by Rudolf Wurlitzer Mfg. Co. In 1955 it was parted out and removed.
In May of 1918, Mayor Speer fell ill with the Spanish influenza and died a few days later on May 14. The funeral was held in the Municipal Auditorium to accommodate the 10,000 plus crowd that was in mourning. Below is a picture of the pipe organ during Mayor Speer’s funeral.
The Auditorium lit up at night, it was fitted with hundreds of light bulbs.
In the early 1940s an area was added to the auditorium to expand the structure which became the home of the Denver Rockets now known as the Denver Nuggets. In 1975 a new arena was built and the Denver Nuggets moved to new McNichols Sports Arena, that arena once sat where the parking lot now sits for Empower Field at Mile High. In 1968 Led Zeppelin’s first North American concert was held in the Auditorium. It was the biggest event to take place at the Auditorium since it had opened.
IIn 1990 the arena section was then torn down the make way for the new state-of-the-art Ellie Caulkins Opera House, still in use today and is part of the Denver Performing Arts Complex.
Thanks for wandering with us,
The Wandering Couchs
