Boiler House

Doors Open Denver: Boiler House
3850 York St

Tour guides: Collin Kemberlin, Owner, Kemberlin Architecture and Fred Glick and Donna Bryson, Homeowners

About the tour: This is a rare opportunity to have a glimpse inside one of Denver’s newest and most exciting single-family adaptive reuse projects. This tour will be jointly led by the owner and architect.

About the building: The Boiler House is a 7,500 square foot single-family home in Denver’s Clayton neighborhood. Designed by Temple Hoyne Buell, the Boiler House originally contained three coal-fired boilers which provided steam heat to the other buildings on the campus. Together, they comprised the Denver Army Medical Depot, all built in 1942 to support the war effort. The Boiler House incorporates the original smokestack, coal silo and fly-ash building into a unique home which celebrates its original industrial volumes and materials while managing to be a warm, family home. The Boiler House also houses the owners’ art collection, including several site-specific commissions.

About the tour guides: Collin Kemberlin has over 25 years’ experience in architecture and design encompassing a great diversity of completed projects, including historic renovation and preservation, mixed-use, single and multi-family residential, hotel and retail and site planning. The common thread in his work is an admiration for Denver and the Rocky Mountain West and the pursuit of design that is environmentally and contextually responsible.

Fred Glick is an active commercial real estate developer working on small, interesting projects, primarily in Denver’s urban core. He is also an active community volunteer, currently serving as vice-chair of the board of RedLine Gallery and on the Downtown Denver Partnership’s Mobility Council and Urban Exploration Planning Committee. Fred previously served on, and chaired, the board of the Academy of Urban Learning, a Denver charter school founded by Jared Polis and Urban Peak to serve homeless students. Fred also previously led the Learning Spaces Committee at Denver Shared Spaces and was a member of the Mile High Connects Advisory Council. As a nonprofit consultant, Fred was instrumental in establishing the Aurora Welcome Center, a shared space serving immigrants and refugees. Fred is a Denver native, returning in 2012 after twenty years abroad in Swaziland, South Africa, India, Egypt and the United Kingdom. Before leaving the U.S., Fred was an arts administrator for modern dance companies in New York City. He holds a BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and is currently enrolled as a master’s student in the University of Colorado Denver’s Urban and Regional Planning Program.

Donna Bryson is housing and hunger reporter for Denverite, an online newsmagazine that is part of Colorado Public Radio. Last year her work for Denverite earned her the Journalist of the Year honor from the Colorado Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Bryson has been a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press, based in Johannesburg, New Delhi, Cairo and London. She has freelanced for such publications as The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Bryson’s 2018 book, Home of the Brave, recounts how Montrose, Colorado took on the challenge of helping military veterans reintegrate into civilian life. Home of the Brave won second place in the non-fiction book category of the National Federation of Press Women’s 2019 Communications Contest. Bryson is also the author of It’s a Black White Thing, which explores young South Africans’ attitudes about race. It’s a Black White Thing was shortlisted, in 2012, for the inaugural City Press Tafelberg Nonfiction Award, a national South African prize.

VERY IMPORTANT, READ IN FULL: This is a virtual tour. Upon registering for this tour, you will receive an email confirmation of your registration from Eventbrite. Within 24 hours you will receive a confirmation from Denver Architecture Foundation (via Demio) with your unique individual link to the tour. Please check your junk/spam if you don’t see this email in your inbox. You will receive reminder emails 24 hours in advance and 1 hour in advance from Denver Architecture Foundation (via Demio), again with your unique individual link to the tour. If you purchase more than one ticket, you must provide names and email addresses for each participant. Demio provides a unique link for each participant to access the tour; the same link cannot be used across multiple participants. Please use a desktop or laptop to view this tour; iPads and phones do not work well with this virtual format.