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Aspen Music Festival and School

The Aspen Music Festival and School are together a prestigious summer music program that trace their roots to the music offerings at Aspen’s Goethe Bicentennial celebration in 1949. The festival puts on a variety of concerts throughout the summer, and…

Bonfils Memorial Theatre

The Bonfils Memorial Theatre on East Colfax Avenue was built by Helen Bonfils for the Denver Civic Theatre in 1953. As the first theater for live performances built in Denver in forty years, the cream-colored building staged more than 400 productions…

Caribou Ranch Recording Studio

The famed Caribou Ranch recording studio, located near Nederland, Colorado, existed for about fifteen years from 1971 to 1985. During its brief history, the recording studio became a destination for dozens of famed musicians and performers, including…

Colorado Chautauqua

Established in 1898 on what was then a barren mesa south of Boulder, Colorado Chautauqua has been providing education and entertainment programs for well over a century. Originally founded by Texas educators, the Chautauqua in Boulder was part of a…

Denver Art Museum

The Denver Art Museum (DAM) (100 W. 14th Avenue) in the city’s Civic Center boasts more than 70,000 works from across the centuries and the world. Best known for its collection of Indigenous art, it was the first major museum to establish a separate…

Denver Athletic Club

The Denver Athletic Club (DAC) is one of the oldest and largest private clubs in Colorado. Founded in 1884 in a rented hall in the First Baptist Church at Eighteenth and Curtis Streets, the DAC has grown into a social club as well as a place to work out…

Denver Center for the Performing Arts

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) is a theatrical organization that puts on professional productions, brings Broadway shows to Denver, and offers educational programming. Established in 1979, DCPA grew out of a Denver theatrical legacy…

Denver Performing Arts Complex

The Denver Performing Arts Complex (DPAC) is a four-block, twelve-acre site that features nearly 10,600 seats across the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex, Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre, Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Boettcher Concert Hall, Garner Galleria…

Denver Public Library

The Denver Public Library, located in downtown Denver, is a cultural hub and valuable resource for the Denver metro area. Begun in the early 1860s, the library collections have grown with Denver, moving from “Old Main,” the Carnegie-funded structure in…

Elitch Gardens

Elitch Gardens is an amusement park in Denver that opened in 1890 as a zoological garden and amusement park with a renowned summer stock theater. John Elitch and his wife, Mary, founded Elitch Gardens on land that was formerly Chilcott Farm in northwest…

Leadville Ice Palace

The Leadville Ice Palace was an enormous, ice-walled building with an exterior in the style of a Norman castle and an interior comprising a large skating rink and two ballrooms. Proposed and constructed in late 1895, the Ice Palace hosted a Crystal…

Paramount Theater

The Paramount Theater (1621 Glenarm Place, Denver) is the best-known Art Deco design of architect Temple Hoyne Buell. Buell created this 1930 palace as the most ornate of all Colorado movie theaters and a gem in the coast-to-coast chain of exuberant…

Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp

Established by Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield in 1913, the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp near Steamboat Springs is the oldest continuously operated performing arts camp in the United States. In the early twentieth century, the…

Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre

Located just west of Denver near the town of Morrison, Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre combines awe-inspiring natural scenery with natural acoustic splendor. The 868-acre park stands 6,450 feet above sea level between the Great Plains and the Rocky…

Rossonian Hotel

The most prominent building at the Five Points intersection in Denver, the Rossonian Hotel opened in 1912 as the Baxter Hotel. Renamed the Rossonian in 1929, its lounge acquired a reputation as the best jazz club between the Midwest and the West Coast,…

Salida Steam Plant

The Salida steam plant was one of the first Edison electric plants in the country. Built in 1887 by the Salida Edison Electric Light Company, it operated until the 1950s. After 1989 the building was renovated and converted into a city-owned theater and…

Tabor Grand Opera House

The Tabor Grand Opera House, constructed by the state’s famed Tabor family, was one of the city’s primary cultural institutions during the late 1800s. The Grand Opera enjoyed a period of popularity and success before falling by the wayside, a story that…

Tabor Opera House

The Tabor Opera House (308 Harrison Avenue, Leadville) was built by Horace Tabor in 1879 to bring high-class entertainment to the rough mining camp of Leadville. It was for a while one of the top theaters in the state. Horace Tabor had to sell the…

Van Briggle Memorial Pottery Building

Built in 1907–8, the Van Briggle Memorial Pottery Building in Colorado Springs was designed by architect Nicolaas van den Arend to serve as the company’s salesroom, pottery plant, and headquarters. Incorporating more than 5,000 tile and terra cotta…

Wheeler Opera House

The merchant and investor Jerome B. Wheeler (1841–1918) built the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen in 1889, making it the third-largest opera house in Colorado at the time. As Aspen declined after the Panic of 1893 and the demonetization of silver, the…