Shaping Denver's skyline: city's landmarks tell a century-old tale.

• Author: Titus, Stephen

Pick any weekday to stroll through Downtown Denver, and the scene is the same: Smartly dressed women talking on cell phones, bike messengers running red lights, and buses along 16th Street disgorging hundreds of passengers.

Now, squeeze your eyes partially shut and open your imagination just a bit, and the women can be holding parasols, the bicycles could be horses, and the bus a carriage, fresh from Union Station with a load of guests being dropped off at the Brown Palace.

For nearly three years now, Who Owns Colorado, a recurring feature in ColoradBiz, has examined new development across the state, barely able to keep up with all the growth and change the state has enjoyed -- and endured.

But one area the feature has overlooked is the development, and redevelopment of some of Downtown Denver's most important and historic buildings.

Looking at just a handful of those buildings paints a remarkably accurate picture of Colorado's developing capital city over the past hundred years. And the same look, with again a little imagination added, could well offer a glimpse into Denver's future.

When the Brown, still Denver's finest hotel, was built in 1892, the city was giddy with the first rush of prosperity from the booming silver industry Henry C. Brown spent $2 million, an unbelievable sum at the time, to build and furnish the lavish retreat.

Deborah Dix, the current public relations director for the Brown, said critics thought the founder of the hotel was crazy to build it 13 blocks from Union Station. The distance would require guests to board a carriage, and later a trolley, for the long, and sometimes cold, ride up 17th Street.

But the journey also took visitors through the city's business and financial district, often called The Wall Street of the West, and it also showed off some of the Queen City's finest assets. The then-recently completed Equitable Life Assurance office was the tallest building in town and an architectural marvel of its own day, costing its New York-based insurer/owner $1.7 million. Historic photos looking east from the building's upper floors show the newly constructed Capitol dome before workers installed gold leaf that makes it shine today.

"In a lot of respects," said Victor Cortes, development manager at the Equitable Building, "(Equitable Life Assurance) was making a statement about their confidence in the West."

Hundreds of other important buildings filled Downtown Denver's turn-of-the-century landscape, but just when everyone was ready to celebrate the coming 20th century...