The History and Architecture of South Pueblo
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Industrial Utopia: The History and Architecture of South Pueblo Prepared by: Jeffrey DeHerrera Adam Thomas Cheri Yost HISTORITECTURE, L.L.C. Prepared for: City of Pueblo, Colorado Certified Local Government Grant Project CO-10-022 July 2011 Industrial Utopia: The activity that is the subject of this material has been financed in part with Federal funds from the Na- The History and Architecture tional Historic Preservation Act, administered by the National Park Service, United States Department of the of South Pueblo Interior and for the Colorado Historical Society. How- ever, the contents and opinions do not necessarily re- Prepared by: flect the views or policies of the United States Department of the Interior or the Society, nor does the Jeffrey DeHerrera mention of trade names or commercial products con- Adam Thomas stitute an endorsement or recommendation by the De- Cheri Yost partment of the Interior or the Society. This program receives Federal funds from the Na- HISTORITECTURE, L.L.C. tional Park Service; Regulations of the United States Post Office Box 181095 Department of the Interior strictly prohibit unlawful Denver, Colorado 80218-8822 discrimination in departmental Federally-assisted pro- www.historitecture.com grams on the basis of race, color, national origin, age or handicap. Any person who believes he or she has Prepared for: been discriminated against in any program, activity or facility operated by a recipient of Federal assistance City of Pueblo, Colorado should write to: Director, Equal Opportunity Program, United States Department of the Interior, National Park Certified Local Government Grant Service, 1849 C Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20240. Project CO-10-022 July 2011 v Table of Contents Introduction: Highly Endowed by Nature 1 On the cover. The Old World and the New World meet at Mesa Junction, the heart of South Pueblo, where a bust of Christopher Columbus, a relic of the clas- SECTION I: HISTORICAL CONTEXT 5 sically influenced City Beautiful movement, stares at the postmodern Robert Hoag Rawlings Public Library. (Jeffrey DeHerrera) Chapter 1: Mythical West 7 Chapter 2: “Look out for the Locomotive!” 13 Chapter 3: A Rival Town 19 Chapter 4: Additions and Subdivisions 27 Chapter 5: Neighborhood Development 37 Chapter 6: Neighborhood Institutions 53 Broadway Arcade Building 53 Hospitals 54 McClelland Orphanage & School 55 McClelland Public Library/Robert Hoag Rawlings Public Library 58 Chapter 7: Churches and Faith-Based Schools 63 Trinity Lutheran School 65 St. Patrick’s School 67 Seton High School 67 Chapter 8: Public Schools 69 Public Education 69 Central High School 71 Keating Junior High School 72 Carlile School 75 Expansion 78 Further Education 81 Pueblo Community College 81 Gulliford Academy 83 HISTORITECTURE, LLC vii Industrial Utopia: The History and Architecture of South Pueblo Chapter 9: The Cultural Landscape 85 Parks 86 Abriendo Avenue 88 Pueblo Christopher Columbus Monument 89 Chapter 10: Transportation and Commercial Development 91 Streetcars 91 Commercial Development 94 Bridges 98 Automobile-Oriented Development 98 Changing Street Names 99 Chapter 11: Architects 101 Patrick Mills 101 George Roe 102 William W. Stickney 102 Walter DeMordaunt 102 William A. Lang 104 Jacob M. Gile 104 Frederick A. Hale 104 Conclusion: Utopia Realized? 107 Notes 109 SECTION 2: PRESERVATION PLAN FOR SOUTH PUEBLO 117 Research 120 Document 122 Evaluate 124 Monitor 127 Promote 128 Steward 130 Selected Styles and Forms Found in Mesa Junction and the Blocks 133 BIBLIOGRAPHY 139 viii HISTORITECTURE, LLC Introduction Highly Endowed by Nature South Pueblo was a place born of vision, of ambition, and reluctant capitalist. In the 1850s he witnessed first-hand both of benevolence. It marked an intersection between the ro- the stunning achievements and sickening horrors the indus- mantic mythology of the American West and limitless—often trial revolution wrought in Britain. He remained uneasy as he ruthless—industrial capitalism. For centuries the natives of this ushered the industrial age into the relatively untouched vast- land climbed its windswept promontories and arid bluffs to ness of Colorado as secretary-treasurer of the Kansas Pacific witness the Arkansas River escape the distant, granite spires Railroad. But like so many before and after him the incompa- of the Rocky Mountains and emerge eastward onto the im- rable vistas of the snow-capped Front Range left Palmer a possible vastness of the Great Plains. Here was a frontline of changed man. While gazing upon the snow-covered peaks he European conquest, where the King of Spain greedily guarded had an epiphany: “Could one live in constant view of these his empire against French incursion, though no monarch grand mountains without being elevated by them to a lofty would ever step foot on its soil or ever know it as more than ar- plane of thought and purpose? …[The Front Range was] like bitrary lines on vague maps. Some Europeans passed through the shore of a glorious New Land, a newer and grander and armed with gunpowder, others armed with the Word of God, happier Columbia than that which greeted the great sailor on turning their theology into geography: Sangre de Cristo— the beach of Santa Domingo.”1 Palmer mused that in his Blood of Christ. Empires rise and fall, and thus revolutionaries hands, Colorado could provide a tabula rasa upon which to claimed this land, first the Mexicans and then the Americans. write a new, kinder chapter in the history of the industrial rev- Yet natives and missionaries, kings and revolutionaries could olution. not have imagined what would finally conquer them all and With his own, new railroad as its foundation, Palmer en- turn these mesas into a metropolis: steel. visioned an industrial utopia, a place where management and In 1872 steel rails connected Pueblo to Denver and the labor worked harmoniously together, toiling not for wealth but rest of the nation. In turn, Pueblo manufactured even more for enlightenment. Competition was to blame for the evils of steel rails, nails, barbed wire, and countless other goods that industrial capitalism, the General theorized. Palmer “thus saw helped transform the West. Yet the railroad and the steel in- Colorado’s isolation as an asset instead of a liability, for the dustry and South Pueblo were all the products of one man’s ocean-like expanses of the plains would protect Palmer’s rail- vision, General William Jackson Palmer. road from rivalry and give the General the free hand he A Quaker from Pennsylvania, Palmer was in many ways a needed to exercise benevolence while pursuing profit,” writes HISTORITECTURE, LLC 1 Industrial Utopia: The History and Architecture of South Pueblo historian Thomas Andrews. “To Palmer, his interlocking visions neighborhood was home to many of Colorado’s foremost cap- held the promise of a better society, where business would be italists, most of whom continued Palmer’s ethic of benevo- more profitable, human interactions with the natural world lence and corporate liberalism. Many grew rich from the more harmonious, and relationships between capitalists and railroads, steel mills, and hundreds of other enterprises that workers more amicable than in the eastern states and Eu- made Pueblo among the southwest’s foremost industrial cities. rope.”2 Of particular importance were the homes, neighbor- And with their fortunes made, they spent the rest of their lives hoods, and cities of Palmer’s managers and workers. He would in public service. Among them were men like Governor James write his philosophy on the very landscape itself, in new Orman. The Colorado General Assembly mourned his passing utopian communities such as Colorado Springs and South on July 21, 1919, with a resolution that could have been ap- Pueblo. plied to so many of South Pueblo’s residents who followed in In the end, Palmer’s experiment in corporate liberalism the footsteps of General Palmer: failed tragically, leaving behind an irrevocable structure of hos- Some men are so highly endowed by nature with ca- tilities between labor and management that ultimately led to pacity for large achievements, that they can conduct deadly labor disputes, including the Ludlow Massacre. But in enormous enterprises, wide in scope and varied in South Pueblo, much of Palmer’s vision remained intact: careful feature, with an ease and success impossible to men consideration of public spaces and civic culture could en- of smaller caliber in projects of limited range and lit- lighten the lives of residents. The neighborhood was marked tle moment. Such a man is Hon. James B. Orman, for- with distinctive, deliberate design: the curvilinear streets of the mer governor of Colorado, contractor, mining man, Blocks, the broad promenade of Abriendo Avenue, monu- financier, politician and almost everything else in the mental edifices and plazas, and Pueblo’s preeminent places of way of a promoter of the welfare and the advance- learning. Moreover, Palmer’s comprehensive vision for South ment of the state.3 Pueblo meant that it did not develop like the city’s other The town platted as South Pueblo originally consisted of neighborhoods. As platted, South Pueblo was enormous. Thus, three different regions south of the Arkansas River, each it grew within itself, through resubdivisions, rather than ex- shaped by its topography and later the geometry of its streets panding outwardly via additions and annexations. Because all (figure i.1). Nearest the river in the flat terrain of the river bot- growth remained within South Pueblo’s originally platted tom is Union Avenue, or today’s downtown Pueblo. Above the boundaries and the neighborhood saw little development fol- Arkansas River sit the Blocks, historically known as Corona lowing World War II, it retains an unusually high level of archi- Park. Here curvilinear streets meander along the bluffs, which tectural cohesiveness and monumentality. visually and physically separate it from downtown.