Doors Open Denver - The Equitable Building

My last stop on the Doors Open Denver tour was The Equitable Building, a commercial office building built in 1892.  I have visited this building during previous Doors Open Denver events, and so only visited it this time because I had half an hour left before this year's festivities ended.  Both the lobby and the basement were open for viewing, and I must say it is an impressive looking place.   Denver bulldozed many of it's older buildings during the urban renewal craze of the 1960s, and so I amazed this building was left standing. Denver was a boom town in the 1880s and early 1890s, and so the Equitable Life Assurance Society of New York erected it to cash in on the real estate frenzy.  Unfortunately, the Silver Crash of 1893 threw Devner into a depression, and things did not recover until the early 1900s.

Regardless, the building, due to it's statue as the premier office building in town, still attracted all of Denver's movers and shakers. The marble lobby is very ornate, and features no less than 4 Tiffany windows, one of which is in front of the grand bronze staircase, and can be seen in the photograph on the right. It is titled "The Genius of Insurance" (surprise!), adding a commercial touch to a piece of great artwork. The building, by the way, changed owners a number of times, and is now an office condominium.

The owners of the building are very proud of it, and as I walked in they handed me both a fact sheet and a pamphlet written by CU-Denver graduate student Kathleen Barlow, which details the entire history of the building, the most interesting part the stories of murders that took place here and the ghosts that are said to haunt it. The most prevalent ghost is Andrew Anderson, a janitor who fell to his death from the 9th floor while cleaning the windows.  He still evidently wanders the 9th floor.  One office worker who arrived at work pretty early reported seeing a man in old fashioned overalls wiping down wood trim around the door, and was told that she should not be in the building this early because the building is haunted.  When she reported this to management, she was told no such person existed.  I am tempted to sneak into the building and go up to the 9th floor some night to see if this ghost appears, but than again, perhaps not.