This massive complex was built in 1942 as the Denver Medical Depot which was one of 11 facilities…read morethat stored and distributed medical supplies and equipment for the U.S. Army during WWII. It was designed by noted local architect, Temple Buell, and uses brick and timber construction to the army standard. 1,000 men worked around the clock to complete the massive complex in an astounding four months.
The Army started to move in as soon as the first section of the initial warehouse was done, although that warehouse was finished in only 22 days. Up to 775 workers, 47% women, received, packaged, and shipped 250 million tons of supplies during the War with 6,000 items in stock and ten rail cars of supplies arriving daily. The scope of the systems that were created on the spot is almost beyond belief. The Depot could ship a complete 1,000 bed hospital within 48 hours. They innovated the use of stacking materials on pallets, moving them with forklifts, and using electromechanical accounting machines to track it all.
The complex occupies 37 acres in a large rectangle, eight blocks long and one block wide between York and Steele Streets with 650,000 square feet of retail, office, and industrial space. The two main warehouses are 1,440 feet long and 180 feet wide, each divided into six fireproof sections, with continuous concrete loading docks on both sides. A 1997 fire destroyed two sections of Warehouse No. 1.
The colonial revival Administration Building faces York, along with the Boiler House, Gate House, Fire House, and Engineer's Building. Behind these is an open quadrangle flanked by the Inflammable Storage Building and Mess Hall. Extending east from here are the twin parallel, quarter-mile-long Warehouse No. 1 and Warehouse No. 2. The east end concludes with the Motor Repair Shop, the Medical Equipment Repair Shop, and the Gasoline Station/Pump House.
Several interesting features are the huge brick smokestack attached to the Boiler House and the metal ash disposal structure with a gabled superstructure connected to a square brick ash loader. There's also a metal coal loading tower and a round brick coal silo with a conical roof.
The Depot was declared surplus and closed in 1946. The VA used it as a supply depot (1946-1947) and Denver housed some city departments there (1949-1950). The Feds took it back and converted the warehouses to office space in 1951 for the Air Force Accounting and Finance Center (1951-1977). Denver city departments and the Denver Public Schools were the main tenants from 1977 to 1993, but the buildings were then abandoned.
The site sat vacant for six years due to contamination and serious deferred maintenance, but was remediated and redeveloped in 1998 as an industrial office park in conjunction with the Denver Urban Renewal Authority. This led to a number of the non-warehouse buildings being occupied by the Inner City Health Center and listing of the property on the Denver and National historic registers.
This effort eventually ran out of steam and a new developer took over in 2014 with a view to combining retail, office, and light industrial uses.
Current tenants include entertainment venues, various service and retail businesses, design and architecture firms, a bakery/coffee shop, a brewery, fitness/health clubs, office tenants, and technology companies. The Lighthouse Writers Workshop also built their new facility in the northwest corner of the property, adjacent to the new 39th Avenue Greenway. It's great to see an important piece of Denver and U.S. history being effectively preserved and reused plus properly integrated into the adjacent neighborhoods.
