Recap: Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Building Tour

DAF offered three special lunchtime tours of the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Building. Tour-goers got a unique opportunity to step inside a historic downtown Denver building and get a firsthand look at what served as the Telephone and Telegraph Company Headquarters for the Mountain States region.

About the tour: The magnificent Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company Headquarters Building includes the nearly original first and fourteenth floors, the Connections Museum and 13 murals by Colorado artist Allen Tupper True. Tour-goers learned of the building site’s history, local communications history and the architecture and construction of the building with tour guides Jody Georgeson, Archivist, and Renee Lang, Acting Executive Director. The tour also covered the influence of business and technology on the building’s structure, stories of employees who provided telephone service to Denver and how communications technology has changed through the years.

About the building: Located at the corner of 14th and Curtis streets in downtown Denver, the building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It cost approximately $4 million to build and became the headquarters of the entire Mountain States territory, which extended from Canada to the Mexican border. It was built from Colorado materials by Colorado companies and artisans. “Colorado’s Bell System Palace” was finished shortly before the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression. Never again would a company build such an homage to the power of industry and technology.