Vanished Denver Landmarks by Mark A. Barnhouse

Author:Mark A. Barnhouse [Barnhouse, Mark A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Architecture, Buildings, Landmarks & Monuments, History, United States, State & Local, West (AK; CA; CO; HI; ID; MT; NV; UT; WY)
ISBN: 9781439673942
Google: -SBDEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2021-10-11T02:44:41+00:00

COTTRELL’S

Decades after its namesake business closed, “Cottrell’s, the mans store” signage graced the second floor of a rundown-looking building at 16th and Welton Streets. Many of its customers had retired or died by the time it came down in 2020, but for nearly a century, Cottrell’s reigned as a leading menswear shop. George F. Cottrell (“COTT-rul”) came to Denver from Providence, Rhode Island, in 1890 at age twenty-seven, seeking relief from chronic hay fever. A clothing salesman with fifteen years’ experience, he found work at a Larimer Street emporium that sent him traveling through mountain towns. In Leadville, he encountered a “noted mining man” who wanted silk shirts. Cottrell, when asked the price, told him twenty-five dollars, and the wealthy miner bought two—when their price in Providence was only one dollar. His employer kept him on.

On Friday, July 23, 1893, walking up 16th Street, Cottrell encountered a bankrupt men’s store between California and Welton Streets. July was the peak of the 1893 Panic; stores were desperate for cash. On this same day, four banks failed; that summer, more than half of Denver’s banks closed. Cottrell saw opportunity: Daniels and Fisher department store, the shop’s major creditor, had taken over and was selling stock and fixtures for $750 in cash. Cottrell negotiated with the manager, reducing that to $675, and went to his bank to withdraw funds. The bank said he could have it after a ninety-day wait, so he went to the wealthiest man he knew, flour millionaire John Kernan Mullen, and explained his predicament. Mullen took him to visit William Garrett Fisher at his store. Fisher would not sell the shop on a promise of future cash but accepted Mullen’s “personal note,” and Cottrell Clothing Company was born.

Denver’s wealthy became regular patrons, with Cottrell selling suits and hats to Henry Cordes Brown, Senator Henry Moore Teller and Senator Thomas Patterson. Yet he also catered to humbler types; in 1936, he told the Colorado Labor Advocate he “attribute[d] a large part of his success to the support of union men.” The shop, enlarged several times, remained in the Crandall Block at 16th and Welton Streets until a 1912 fire; it reopened in the Mack Block across the alley. Cottrell died in 1938, and his widow, along with longtime employees H.A. Rodecker and William E. Glass, kept Cottrell’s going. In 1948, anticipating Denver’s growth and needing to vacate the scheduled-for-demolition Mack Block, Rodecker and Glass signed a lease in the Liebhardt Building, a two-story structure built in 1915 in place of the burned Crandall Block. When the new Cottrell’s opened in 1950, it occupied all of the fully remodeled, twenty-eight-thousand-square-foot structure, now with an elegant Modernist façade of dark Virginia greenstone trimmed with aluminum. The street level featured showcase windows for passersby, while large second-floor windows allowed ample light to illuminate Cottrell’s vast suit selection. The interior had a masculine, clubby feeling, with tan and brown on the first floor and green on the second, with light oak fixtures. Escalators connected the floors, and over eighty employees assisted customers.

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