Denver Fire Station #1

Denver Fire Station #1

Sitting next to the Colorado Convention Center at the busy intersection of Colfax Avenue and Speer Boulevard is the third building in Denver’s history to bear the designation Denver Fire Station No. 1. In addition to Engine 1 and Tower 1, it also houses special operations and the District 2 fire chief, and serves as headquarters for the Denver Fire Department.

Information on this building is scarce. Although it was built in the 70s, the architect remains absent from much of the documentation. The commercial brick and concrete structure has notable influences from the International style as exemplified by its highly simplified forms, clean planes and near complete lack of ornamentation. Tan brick in regular courses clads the entirety of theexterior. Rectilinear and curved semi-cylindrical forms mingle in an ordered collusion to create the almost machine-produced appearance, as if the building was created from a single form scaled to varying degrees to fit its purpose. Offices and administrative spaces are on the east side and in the single-story wing to the west,while the apparatus floor itself—the area housing the actual fire equipment—is centered and pushed out towards Colfax. Windows are almost exclusively configured in ribbons sitting in large recessed bays where the overhead eaves possess the only decoration visible on the exterior—defining soldier courses that blend into near imperception with the other bonds. The large doors for the fire equipment are evenly spaced, identical bays, centered in the protruding face in perfect uniformity.

References
Denver Property Taxation and Assessment System. Retrieved from https://www.denvergov.org/property/realproperty/summary/163329015.

Download this site description here.