The Inside Story Of Colorado Women's College

I had dinner with my friends Wally and Linda a few weeks back, and after I told a story about an encounter with Mrs. Temple Buell back when I managed the Hatch's Bookstore in the University Hills Mall in the 1980s, Linda, a graduate of Denver's Colorado Women's College, seen in the photograph on the left, told me a story of her own about that school and Mr. Temple Buell himself. Buell was a very successful architect in Denver, and owned the Cherry Creek Shopping Center, a very successful operation located in the heart of the city.  Buell left this shopping center (valued at the time at 25 million dollars) to Colorado Women's College in his will, provided that the college pay the property taxes and he would keep the revenue until the title passed upon his death.  They also had to change the name of the school to Temple Buell College.

Donations to the school dropped precipitously due to both anger over the name change and the belief that the school no longer needed the money, due to that 25 million dollar pledge. Required to pay that huge property tax every year, the financially strapped school was sold to the University of Denver in 1982, and DU established the Women's College of the University of Denver.  DU continued operations on the CWC campus, and also located both it's music school and law school there.  The DU Bookstore, where I worked as the Finance Manager for almost 30 years, opened a satellite store on campus, and when DU sold the property years later, it moved the Women's College to a new building on the main campus, the garden of which can be seen in the photograph on the right.  Needless to say, Linda is not a Temple Buell fan.  And why does the gate say Colorado Woman's College instead of Colorado Women's College?  Do they have only one student?  The mind boggles.