Colorado Bridge of the Future

Three Centuries of Denver Architecture
[Denver, Colorado, USA] By European standards Denver is not an 'old' city, yet three centuries of architecture are represented in this panorama. The red brick mansion is known as the Byers-Evans House and was built in 1883. William N. Byers, founded Denver's first newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News. Byers later sold it to the son of Colorado's second territorial governor; William Gray Evans. (www.denver.citysearch.com)

The large gray building (behind the mansion) is the Denver Art Museum; it was completed in 1971. (www.denverartmuseum.org) The Art Museum has 210,000 square feet and has been a cultural icon in the American West for 30 years.

The skeletal "Ships Prow" rising out of a former Denver parking lot is (or will be) the Frederic C. Hamilton Building; the Denver Art Museum's first major expansion; scheduled for completion in Fall, 2006. Designed by Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind, (www.greatbuildings.com) the finished structure will be "a geometric explosion of glass and titanium." (Also the first Libeskind-designed structure to reach completion in the United States; the second will be the World Trade Center reconstruction.)

Eventually the "Prow" of this building will extend across downtown Denver's 13th Ave and connect with the existing Art Museum. An enclosed 100 foot bridge will allow visitors to move from one structure to the other. The Hamilton Building will use 2,740 tons of steel, 230,000 square feet of titanium, and 7,400 cubic yards of concrete.

Photographer's Note: The original intent of this panorama was to serve as a Metaphorical Bridge spanning three centuries of Denver architecture. Imagine my surprise when, during my research, I learned that I had actually shot a bridge of the future!

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