Hotel Denver, Glenwood Springs
Four saloons, a restaurant, a grocery store and two rooming houses once occupied the space where Hotel Denver now stands. The hodgepodge of structures was expanded and combined by the successful rooming house owners, Art Kendrick and Henry Bosco, into today’s modern hotel that dates back to 1915. Steve and April Carver, who have owned the hotel for the last 24 years, continue to uncover and restore original brick walls, hardwood floors and antiques. Today’s 68-room Hotel Denver has 3,760 square feet of meeting space and is home to Glenwood Canyon Brewpub, Mona Lisa Boutique and Riverblend Coffee House. Located on Seventh Street opposite the train station, Hotel Denver serves train passengers, groups and tourists, and celebrated its 100th birthday on October 17.
Tivoli Brewing Company, Denver
Yesterday: Soon after gold was discovered in Colorado in 1858, German settlers arrived and began brewing beer. Rocky Mountain Brewery and Sigi’s Brewery, the state’s first two breweries, evolved into Tivoli Brewery in 1900 and became one of the largest in the country by the 1950s. A major flood and labor strike resulted in the shuttering of the nation’s second oldest continuously operating brewery in 1969.
Today: In 2012, a group of native Coloradoans formed Tivoli Distributing Company, and the historic Tivoli Beer recipe once again entered the brew kettle on Aug. 1, 2012. The new company spent $7 million to renovate a portion of the beer’s birthplace in what is now the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria Campus, a 150-acre campus shared by three colleges. Tivoli Brewery and Tap House opened on Aug. 22, 2015 and is the first full-production brewery on a college campus in the United States. In tandem, Metropolitan State University of Denver (located on Auraria Campus) added four new beer courses for fall and named Scott Kerkmans faculty coordinator for its growing Beer Industry Operations program. A former brewer at Alaska Brewing, Kerkmans is one of the first five certified cicerones in the world and is a leading professional educator for beer distributors, retailers and brewers.
