History Seminar May 2010 Marking Time, The Petroleum B “To do the common thing in an uncommon way” had been a guiding motto of Kenneth King, president of Columbia Savings & Loan.’ And his new Petroleum Building, when it was built in 1957, had followed suit, in occupancy and design. Tenancy decisions had crowded its halls with an exclusive mix of bankers and oilmen, while the building’s austere, glass-grid facade contrasted its “resplendent like no other,” as one journalist then described it, opulent interior ? ‘Two types of occupants, two approaches to design it was the blending of these common things in an uncommon way that gave The Petroleum Building its unique character This “uncommonness” was in large part a product of timing, an intersection of two emerging institutions at a time when architectural styles were shifting, By the late 1940s, King had been seeking additional office space for his expanding S&L just as The Petroleum Club, then the vanguard of not only the budding oil industry in Denver but that of the entire Rocky Mountain region, was seeking larger and more fashionable lodgings for its growing membership. ‘When the two institutions began collaboration on the design of their Petroleum Building, the ‘geometric “glass cube,” the symbol of the new post-war International Style, had just about replaced the decorative ornamentation and thick stone walls that marked the pre-war styles of Art Deco and Art Moderne. But if central to the building’s character were industry and architectural timing, then central to this timing were the efforts of Columbia president Kenneth King, Petroleum Club president Russell Volk, and architect Charles Strong Kenneth Kendal King Foundation, 1c com/docs/?84377S/association-coloado-n nizations * Denver Post, June 14, 1953, p. 16.2 AARON GABBANI Figure 1. Petroleum Building present day, 2 Hard work and a change in federal home mortgage laws brought King his wealth, he was not born into it. After his father died—when King was eight years of age—-he was forced to take a job alongside his mother at a local boarding house to help earn money for the family. After high school he worked his way through four years at Northwestern University in Iilinois driving3 AARON GABBANI a taxi, waiting tables, and selling men’s clothes.* In 1936, King rented a $10-a-month desk in a large office in downtown Denver, hired a part-time secretary and started the Columbia Savings & Loan. Just two years prior the U.S. government had passed the National Housing Act to aid potential homebuyers acquire loans. King took advantage of this legislation and centered his company’s efforts on making home loans to middle and lower class Denverites. “We happen to be the first company in Colorado to make [Federal Housing Administration] loans,” said King, “That really got us rolling,” Business grew fast and so did his need for additional staff and office space; over the next decade that single desk became an office and then the office an entire floor. It was then that King’s dream of building his own company’s quarters took shape. He then began looking for an appropriate site." Denver in the 1940s was not yet so built up, so overcrowded with beloved-by-someonc landmarks that modernization entailed wholesale demolition; small, nondescript one-story affairs fill held prime plots of land throughout Denver’s emerging central business district. In 1946, a Chicago-based real estate surveying firm deemed the southwest comer of 16" and Broadway the most suitable building site for development in Denver. A single-story building occupied by a record shop, photo studio and a jewelry store held the site—a site no more than 100 feet from, at the time, the city’s busiest intersection, Colfax and Broadway.’ When this news reached King, he quietly acquired the land, Interestingly, King had been staring at it for the past decade —the site was directly across the street from his current offices in the Majestic Building, located on the northwest comer of 16” and Broadway. Shortly thereafter, when King decided to limit tenancy > Kenneth Kendal King Foundation, www. docstoc. com/docs/284377S/association-coloado-non-of ion-profit “ Denver Post, April 28, 1957 Denver business Journal, Samuary 1, 1999, hitp:idenver bizjournals.com 199/01 /story6, htm4:AARON GABBANI of his new building to his Columbie Savings & Loan and firms connected to the oil industry, an eventual partnership between his S&L and Denver's Petroleum Club was not far off.$ The Petroleum Club had formed in the mid-1940s as a result of the growing oil industry in the Rocky Mountain region. Around the same time King had purchased the land at the corner of 16" Street and Broadway, Bill and Maury Goodin had decided to throw a Christmas party. The Goodin brothers were oil and gas analysts and proprietors of Denver-based Petroleum Information, a.who's-doing-what-where regional publication. They had circulated an open. invitation to local oil and gas men for a Christmas party at the Ramblers Room inside the Albany Hotel in downtown Denver. The favorable turnout sparked in the brothers an idea: to start a club, a place for oil and gas men to socialize and exchange industry information.” Ifthe club was a byproduct of the oil industry's growth in the region, then this growth in the region was a byproduct of the U.S, government’s actions during the war. Overland oil transport had become a necessity when German submarines began appearing in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic coastline to target tankers of Venezuelan and Texan oil bound for the major refineries of New York and Philadelphia, The American government responded by building an overland pipeline system, most notably the Big Inch and Little Big Inch. Together these stretches of pipeline pushed 500,000 barrels of oil daily {rom the oil fields of Fast Texas to the refineries of the east coast. Concems on whether such demand would continue post-war quickly subsided as new automobile purchases sharply increased after both the depression and the war had stunted demand; that plus new domestic and international markets for American * Denver Post, April 28, 1957. ” Denver Petroleum Club, www.denverpetroleumelub,com.5 AARON GABBANI goods meant a boon for the oil and natural gas industry.® With this new pipeline infrastructure in place, oil speculators expanded exploration efforts into new fields, to include many untapped areas within the Rocky Mountain States. Speculators began acquiring large swaths of acreage Within the region in anticipation of iong-tem development. Along with the increase in pipeline infrastructure and the resulting oil speculation, the U.S. government repealed their imposed price ceiling of $1.20 per barrel, originally put in place as a cost control effort during the war? As a result, the price per barrel began to tise: from $1.20 per barrel in 1945, the price hit $1.63 by 1946 and then $2.16 by 1947. Subsequently, Colorado's annual oil production increased from 2.3 million barrels in the mid-1940s to approximately 30 million barrels by the mid-1950s, with a per barrel price topping $3.'” Amid this expansion, oil and gas men began to organize themselves—most notably in Los Angeles, Houston, and Denver. By 1948 the Goodin brothers had secured for their new Petroleum Club permanent residence in the backroom of the Albany Hotel. “Our original mission,” described Tom Reagan, then club president in 2001, “was as a gathering place for members.,, who, at the time they came to Denver, probably weren’t met with open arms,”"" ‘Whether the public’s arms were open or not, the Denver press lauded what the new club meant for the city. Under the banner, “Petroleum Club Growth is Symbol of New Economic Factors in the Denver Area,” a local Denver business journal in 1953 noted the club's impact: * Jack Donahue, The Finest m the Land: The Story of the Petroleum Club in Houston (Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1984), p. 6, * Ibid p. 6, °° Corvi's Rocky Mountain Business Journal, September 24, 1953, p. 72 and Infationdata,com, hupv/www.inflationdata com/inflation/| Pri easy " Denver Post, Decetnber 2, 2004, p. IC.6 AARON GABBANI In the new expansion that has overtaken Denver, perhaps the most significant symbol in human terms was the founding in 1948 and subsequent growth of The Petroleum Club of Denver — an institution brought into existence as a direct result of a new economic factor in the Denver orbit.'? Denver became the oil capital of the Rocky Mountain region. “Oil men prefer Denver,” a representative from the Denver City Planning Commission had commented at the time, “because of its favorable location on the axis from Montana to Texas and because of its cosmopolitan character."!? The club attracted a wide swath of oil industry professionals: petroleum engineers, state oil inspectors, mineral supervisors, state geolo; s, geologic surveyors, tank and supply salesmen, drillers, industry lawyers and accountants, and others possessing even the slimmest affiliation with the oil industry.'* Most days of the week, drop-in card games could be found in the backroom at the Albany, The club began sponsoring an annual golf tournament and crowning Man of the Year for outstanding service within its industry. With its membership growing, the club expanded its functions to include the families of its male-only members. “It was very family oriented,” Bill Goodin’s son remembers, “There were a lot of receptions. I remember going to a Family Fishing Day up at Elk Falls about an hour west of Denver.”'* Goodins’ Petroleum Information tracked the region’s growth, and articles in local newspapers and journals routinely included stat lines charting regional developments: “Oil expenditures up from $80 million in 1952 to over $100 million in 1953”; 22 oil discoveries in Colorado, 10 in Wyoming”; “3,390 new oil wells drilled, most in history”; “Operators drilled 4,492 wells in a 10-state region”; “25 percent increase over last year’s record and a success * Ceri's Rocky Mountain Business Journal, September 24, 1953, p. 43. * [bid., p. 76. Cervi's Rocky Mountain Business Journal, September 24, 1953, p. 43, 5 Denver Post, September, 10, 2007, www, denverpost.co 47561.7 AARON GABBANI percentage of 12.2.”"'° The expansion of well exploration throughout Colorado continued to swell club membership. Witt membership expanding, the Petroleum Club had outgrown its accommodations at the Albany. The club temporarily moved in 1955 into the fourth floor of the new Mile High ‘Tower at 1700 Broadway. Just a few blocks south, and under the watchful eye of King, shovels had already broken ground on his new Petroleum Building. After King had contacted Bill Goodin, then the president of the Petroleum Club, with the idea of joining institutions in the construction of his new building, now being called the Petroleum Building, the next step was to solicit a design mockup from an architectural firm. Even though Temple H, Buell & Co. had submitted i ial sketches for the building as early as 1948, it was not until early 1953 that the project gained sufficient momentum.'7 By then Goodin had been succeeded as club president by Russell Volk, president of the mid-size oil firm Plains Exploration, The image of the heavy drinking oilman in a wide-brimmed Stetson, a well-established stereotype by the 1950s, did not extend to Russell Volk. Hardly an “all hat and no cattle” player in the industry, Volk was an experienced wildcatter—one who drills exploratory wells in areas, outside known oil fields. In 1929, when Volk was still a student at the Colorado School of Mines, he had raised $8,000 over the Christmas holiday break to acquire 20,000 acres in northeastern Colorado beneath which he (together with staff members in the School of Mines geology department) thought oil lay. Meager findings, however, exhausted funds until a stock issue in 1931 raised additional capital under the newly-formed Plains Exploration. But it would * Corvi's Rocky Mountain Business Journal, September 24, 1953, p. 72 and Denver Post, December 29, 1957, p. 3E. ” Denver Past, April 8, 1948,AARON GABBANI not be until 1941 that Volk would have his first producing oil well. After another decade of “heartbreaking results,” as Volk explained in a 1957 interview, his company finally began seeing sustained annual profits. By the time Volk became president of The Petroleum Club in the early 1950s, he had been chasing “black gold” in and around Colorado for nearly 25 years, with his Plains Exploration by then clearing a modest, low six-figures in oil and gas sales. '* With Volk now having replaced Goodin alongside King in the building’s development, the building mockup by Temple H1. Buell, which might have been current in design in 1948, was outdated by the early 1950s, Architectural trends in aesthetics had changed (as evidenced in figures 2 and 3): flat roofs were now in vogue, not upper-story setbacks; outer walls of connected glass sheeting were favored over walls supported by thick cement vertical pilasters. King and © Denver Post, December 29, 1957, p. IE.‘AARON GABBANI Volk now looked to Denver architect Charles D. Strong for their Petroleum Building’s new design. Strong, like King and Volk, was a self-made man. Born in 1895 in Columbus, Ohio, Strong moved to Denver in 1922 to aid in his wife's battle with tuberculosis. He bounced between design offices until starting his own architectural practice in 1927, which he eventually folded in 1933 as the Depression began. After a stint as a civic activist, helping the unemployed buy food, find accommodations and gain employment, he re-started his architectural practice in 1936." No type of project appeared to be beyond his skills—he designed homes, office buildings, shopping centers, stores, theaters, and university buildings. He moved seamlessly from design styles Art Deco to Art Moderne, following the architectural trends of the day where ‘omamentation was gradually lessened in favor of clean lines and emphasizing components of structure, Since the end of the war, claborate ornamental motif’ had been gradually reduced to mere hints; decorative elements had been subdued, if not abandoned altogether; and windows, once isolated glass blocks, had merged into sheer glass walls. Strong’s style by the early 1950s, when he approached designing the Petroleum Building, had migrated to what was now being, called the International, or Miesian, style The International style epitomized what Henry-Russell Hitchcock called the construction of “actual monuments.””° Personified by the monolithic “strong silent type,” as Joan Ockman phrased it, these towering glass and steel skyscrapers that lacked superfluous ornamentation were United States Department of Interior, National Register of Historic Places, Registration Form, Charles D. Strong, Architect 1929-1956, www coloradohistory 4 /etv/pdfs! SDV9 © Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The international Stule (New York: McGraw-Hill Ine., 1966), p. 247.10 AARON GABBANI elegant and brooding.” Outer walls became true fagades as they were no longer load-bearing; interior supports bore the weight of these immense structures leaving the outer walls to simply keep the weather out, hence the term “glass curtain wall.” Tt was a style fit for its time, embodying the values that had been validated by victory in the war, which was, as Ockman describes it, the “expansionist ambitions and laconic demeanor of American capitalism.””? One of the principal architects that defined this style was Mies van der Rohe. “Less is more,” Mies had coined, and it fit precisely the Cold War, corporate image America had adopted. Nicknames quickly adorned this style of architecture —being called “the machine for the living,” “the glass cube,” “the waterless fish tank.” When Denver newspapers announced the construction of the city’s third skyscraper— The Petroleum Building—the first and second had already adopted this Miesian style. The first two modem skyscrapers in Denver were the Denver Club Tower at 518 17" Street, built in 1954, and the Mile High Tower at 1700 Broadway, built in 1956, Strong’s design followed suit. He layered horizontal bands of opaque bluish-gray spandrel glass within the glass curtain wall. He ‘wnang the top fourteenth floor in a cantilevered cement parapet, He then ran slender vertical cement pilasters up the outer walls marking the bays and comers. A basement and sub-basement dropped down well below the first floor, with forty-seven caissons, which anchored the building, extending down even further, Down through the building’ s “atomic core” ran stairs leading to a bomb shelter in a sub-basement where sat three wells, two shallow and one deep.”* Due to the irregular comer plot upon which the building would sit, Strong designed no two sides—six in Foan Ockman, “Mirror Images: Technology, Consumption, and the Representation of Gender in America Architecture since World War II,” p. 156, 2 Ibid, p. 136. ® Denver Post, November 23, 1956.11 AARON GABBANI Figure 4, From left to right: Kenneth’s brother Harold, counsel for the Oil Building Corporation; E.P. Tallant, Petroleum Club secretary; A.O. Johnson, corporation secretary; Kenneth Kings and Russell Volk. The year is 1933, all—of the building to be of equal width. Finally, thousands of tiny electric coils would be installed in the sidewalks around the building to keep them clear of snow in bad weather. ”* King and his Oil Building Corporation, a small group of men formed to oversee the building’s construction, along with Volk had green lit Strong’s design. By 1953, King, Volk and three other men associated with the project posed for a photograph around a three-foot tall model built to Strong’s design (figure 4). Such pride and joy these men exuded around Strong’s boxy polygon. From meager beginnings, the self-made men of King, Volk, and Strong had produced a lasting monument to their efforts. ‘The building officially broke ground in January 1954, Six months prior to the start of construction, The Petroleum Club board approved Denver architect Gordon White's design for their club's interior, which would fill the entire thirteenth and fourteenth floors. Everything the building's exterior was—simplification of form, rejection * Denver Post, September 30, 1957,12 AARON GABBANL ae Figures 5, 6nd 7, The Petroleum Clb interior of ornamentation, hard angular stee! and glass—the club’s interior was not, Ifthe dirt and the dust of the Eastern Colorado oil fields was one side of the oil business, this was the other, It was Juxurious and a level of swank new to the Mile High city. As one local reporter put it, “No industry organization in the United States or Canada [will have] resplendent quarters comparable.” The club's (then) 700 members would enjoy chandeliers dangling from trey ceilings, painted murals of the Wild West coloring dining room walls, a 60-foot polished oak bar (then the city’s longest) running through the cocktail longue, The 220-person dining room would offer unobstructed mountain views that ranged as far south as Pike’s Peak and as far north as Long’s Peak. The club also would enjoy three smaller private dining rooms, a card room, club offices, a private library, a recreation room, a ballroom, and a special high-speed elevator that would be made available for exclusive club use during rush hours. Furnishings and fixtures for ‘The Petroleum Club tipped $500,000, a princely sum in the mid-1950s.7° ® Denver Post, June M4, 1953, p. 16A. * Denver Post, Sune 14, 1953, p. 16A and Denver Post, Jaary 17, 195413 AARON GABBANI Construction on The Petroleum Building was completed by the fall of 1957. Total cost had gradually swelled from its initial $3 million price tag in late 1953 to $3.5 million by early 1954, $4.4 million by mid-1954, and finally $4.5 million by building’s completion.” King’s Columbia Savings & Loan took the first floor, put up seven teller windows and opened Denver's first drive-through teller along the building’s back alley; it also took both basements, which contained its vaults, a full kitchen, and a large auditorium. Floors two through eleven went for general rental while the fourteenth held the law library, spare offices, and penthouse suites for visiting associates. The twelfth and thirteenth floors, however, were for exclusive use by The Petroleum Club. ‘The building’s grand opening was on September 30, 1957. Announcements ran in the local newspapers, The police closed down the stretch of 16" Strect in front of the building's entrance for the morning’s dedication, Food tents and exhibits, including a forty-foot working model of an oil refinery that converted fresh crude into naptha, kerosene, distillate and diesel fuel, filled the street.”* King emceed the occasion and called the building “a monument to future growth.” Denver mayor Will Nicholson came to say a few words, s0 too did a representative from the governor’s office. Part of the ceremony included the unveiling of a quote by King and his brother Harold that had been chiseled into one of the rectangular granite slabs on the building’s facade. To “future growth” and to “serve faithfully,” as their quote optimistically professes, hints at what the brothers desired for their Petroleum Building, or specifically for ® Denver Post, November 23, 1956 and Denver Post, June 14, 1983, p. 16A and Denver Post, September, 10, 2007, ‘yen denverpast com/denver/co_ 6847561. * The Denver Post, September 30, 1957.‘AARON GABBANI Figure 8, Time Capsule and dedication quote on building’s fagade. Columbia and the oil industry firms within—loyalty and lasting success The dedication of this building evidences faith in the future growth of our city and state, and our confidence that the institutions housed within will long endure if they serve faithfully and unselfishly our country, our state, and our community. Harold Taft King Kenneth K. King Beside the quote and tucked behind the granite slab, King and the other members of the il Building Association enclosed a time capsule. A photograph of King, nuggets of gold and silver, samples of oil and uranium, a current roster of Petroleum Club members, a financial statement of Columbia Savings & Loan, and the front pages of the day’s Denver Post and Rocky ‘Mountain News filled the capsule.” “To be opened Sept 30, 2007,” reads the given instructions. Inseribing the quote neither onto a plaque nor locating it encased somewhere in the building's lobby but physically onto the building’s facade, further speaks to the desire of permanence by which King and the others had undertaken the building's construction. ® Denver Post, September 30, 1957,115 AARON GABBANI But this permanence proved elusive. King sold Columbia in 1960 and The Petroleum Building in 1970.” ‘The Petroleum Club, the namesake of the building and the vanguard of its occupant oilmen, relocated across town in 1978." When the building was sold again in 2007, its new owners renovated the fagade and interior*? Kenneth King died in 1992, Russell Volk in 1979, and Charles Strong in 1974. With its original occupants gone, its design altered, and its founders deceased, only the direct efforts at permanence appear to have remained: the quote on the facade and the building's name. By blending “common things in an uncommon way,” as went King’s motto, The Petroleum Building gained its character—its class of occupants and its exterior and interior designs, Depression-era mortgage loans brought success to the Columbia Savings & Loan at a time when post-war oil exploration bolstered Petroleum Club membership. In turn, their building had been designed when architectural styles were shifting, from the ormamental to the austere; and yet this swing in aesthetic did not lend itself to the still desirable lavishness for interior decoration, Timing had originally determined The Petroleum Building’s unique character, and yet in a very “common way” time has also managed to all but erase it ® bid. and The Rocky Mountain News, March, 5, 1970, p16. © The Denver Post, December, 2, 2004, p.1C. ® Denver Post, September, 10, 2007, www. den ymidenverico_ 6847: