Denver

[John Droste]

Folks,
I would like some advice with this image please.

javascript://;

If my link is full it will be of Wynkoop Street.

To the left of the Kansas Pacific freight rooms there is a narrow gauge train diverging off Wynkoop Street. Further to the left of that train again is a stone works. Are the boxcars parked in the stone works yard belonging to the DSP&P? They are completely side on to the camera so should be easy to identify, except I am not familiar enough to make the call.
Thanks,
John

[John Droste]

Sorry, that link was not proper. Try this one. It is to the DPL.

http://cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15330coll22/id/88627

John

[Ron Rudnick]

Yes they are two DSP&P 26' box cars

[John Droste]

Thanks Ron.

This poses some interesting questions to me.
Did Governor Evans have in mind when he built a line to Morrison and had all of Denvers dignitaries invited to Morrison on a picnic on the opening of that line, intend to have them view the available stone resources for construction in the Denver Union Station? It would have enabled he and the DSP to gain the strong interest that they did have in that building.
 We know the sandstone in the Station came from Morrison. It is not known, as far as I know at least, where the granite came from for the pillars but I do believe that there where granite quarries in Morrison also.

So correct me if I am wrong. The reason for the stone works in this location was indeed to provide cut stone for the Union Station?
And the tall chimneys nearby on Wynkoop St were to supply powered machinery to cut and prepare stone in that long row of workshop along next to the DSP boxcars? I presume this is the case. All of it. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Also, the stone offcuts and waste had to go somewhere. Some may recall that I mentioned recently that the Alpine tunnel station/engine house pieces of cut stone as some of the corner stones in the building. Not to forget that the window and door frames stone surrounds would need to have been cut and supplied from somewhere. Why not here? Once again, I am presuming, so please enlighten me if anybody knows more. I am sure others do.

 One thing however. The photo is dated 1882 on the back. I am very very confident that I can show that this photo was taken in 1881, just at the time when the Union Station was completed. I will do that next.

 On a final note. Somebody asked me how the panels of the Como depot could be transported. And my reply was that they could be carted on an A frame on a flat car or gondola. And that is exactly what you will see on the flatcar on the train heading into the Union Station.

John

[Robert McFarland]

Just where are the 26 ft boxcars?

[Robert McFarland]

There is info in Bogies& Loop indicating Garos  station was  hauled from Denver to Garos in sections on flat cars.Later it was moved from Garos to Fairplay.

[John Droste]

Just above the DRG station Robert. More or less perpendicular to Wynkoop Street. The line must come in from the North west side although I can not identify tracks.

Thanks for the comment on Garos too. Mr Poor mentions in his book while discussing the Georgetown loop, more specifically while discussing the grades being prepared above the loop, he mentions that the depot at the destination above, "is being prepared in Denver in readiness." Or words to that effect! Can't remember the name of the destination place as I am not focused on that area but it stuck in my mind that buildings were prepared elsewhere and moved.

 I feel very strongly that the Dispatchers building in Como was prepared the same way. If you look at the photos of Como taken in supposed 1883 and 1884, the repaired roof on the Como depot seems to show a greater contrast in the 84 photo than in the 83 photo. That is only from the appearance of the photos of course, but to think that that contrast could still be defined as such after a whole year exposed to the elements, I really do have to question that!
 Is it only presumed that there must be a year difference between the photos because it was not anticipated that the Dispatcher`s building could be erected in a very short space of time? If so, it would account for why the hotel seemed to be at a standstill for a year, and was actually not so.

Regarding the hotel in Como. Building design in the day was almost always symmetrical. The supposed extension to the rear of the building when extended through to the front of the building creates a symmetrical arrangement with the front door and windows each side.
 Also, the kitchen on the south end, which had a doorway is also symmetrical in arrangement of its windows if you portion that section of the hotel off inline with the deeper part of the hotel. The doorway was bricked in before the hotel burned but in the 83 photo, a pole protrudes out above the door and a hanging banner seems visible blowing in the breeze. The kitchen was open for business at that time and it seems independently too.
 The other side it seems to me, the two hotels where built apart and then along the way it was decided to build a passage to connect the two hotels together. The symmetry of the windows in that connecting passage seem to indicate that too.

 I have the Pacific hotel up as my screen shot and I often gaze at it. I believe that there is a identifiable difference in shade where the "passage" from the hotel connects the actual hotel. Meaning, that the brick work was done at different times at that point.
 Where the hotel meets the "Eating House" or kitchen, I can not find any such markings. So maybe the Eating house started of separately as a separate building although connected, and by the time construction approached the bricklaying phase, the bricks were laid through in one lot.
 And since I am now warmed up..
 As I understand things but could be wrong as I often am, The wall that separated the Eating House with the Hotel would be on the current foundations of the south wall of the hotel today. Seems to be at least one chimney in the Pacific hotel photo in this same location!

And just to relate a matter from my own experience to this. Years ago, I had a contract to refit a double story sandstone business in the main street of where I live. Upstairs in the dividing wall between the front two rooms, a crack was spreading apart in the middle of the wall from the floor going upwards. I did not know the cause of this until I had stripped out the shop beneath. What had happened was, the wall that below the upper wall had been removed and a flimsy concrete beam had been poured into a box frame to support the upper wall. But it was not substantial enough and the upper floor was collapsing, splitting apart, forcing the side walls apart in the process. And I had to bring engineers in to design a proper support system and halted the problem by inserting steel columns from the ground in concrete up to the underside of the collapsing wall.
And I see an identical situation now, again, at the current hotel. Which leads me to suspect that the foundations have been removed to a degree that the wall is collapsing down s a result. Thats why I suspect that there is a void under the garage. An unknown room.
 Time will tell.

[John Droste]

On top of all that I just expressed regarding the Pacific Hotel. I have explained that the depot had been moved prior to the 1883 photo. I also explained that the roof over the office had been changed to run in a different direction, an extension of the main depot roof.

The late decision to add the Eating house would account for the Depot and office being moved to make room.
In fact, despite it being evident that the Como depot with office are made up of different buildings with sections of each interspersed through out, I cannot really find anything to suggest that the office and depot were not seperate building constructions before then. In Como, I mean.
 I might put some serious thought into this idea. The depot itself bar the office was assembled on heavy timber beams, two half walls in the "second extension", and a section of wall the width of the office too in the north wall. And then of coarse the east wall being the same size as that. Hmmmmm!