At the corner of 4th & Main in Downtown Pueblo and adjacent to the Historic Federal Building is the Colorado Theater. The theater sits atop the footprint of the former Pueblo Opera House which was designed by Adler & Sullivan and opened in 1890. It was their first project out of their home city of Chicago. Frank Lloyd Wright was also a junior draftsman for Louis Sullivan and is credited with the engineering and design of the single span mezzanines of the famed Opera House. Unfortunately after the Annual Grocers' Ball in March 1922 which had taken place in the upper event spaces, a fire started and destroyed the landmark building on a frigid winter day.
Pop Kite, who was the beloved barber in the basement in the Opera House, pledged that the building would be rebuilt and he would return with his business as a symbol of resilience and solidarity. The city was devastated the year prior in June 1921 by the Great Flood, so Pop became the cheerleader for the rebuilding effort which was completed in 1926. Pueblo has an extraordinary legacy of theater and entertainment establishments and in the early 1900s had over 80 theaters dotting the city and its neighborhoods which presented everything from vaudeville to "talkies". As the second largest city in Colorado, Denver and Pueblo were the stops for Hollywood actors as they did their rounds to promote their films (most stayed in the Vail Hotel in Pueblo).
The Colorado Building & Theater have been closed for over 15 years, but there is renewed interest in restoring the historic theater for film and visual & performing arts. There is also an opportunity to convert the upper floors (2, 3 and 4) of the commercial building into housing and mix use. The recently established Pueblo Regional Film Commission has made the restoration and renovation of one of Pueblo's historic movie houses part of its mission. Pueblo is also fortunate to have Eric Gubelman as the new director of Southern Colorado Economic Development District (SCEDD) and he brings some of the best experience in the the operations and management of historic movie houses. His background includes owning and operating small market first run movie theaters, and stacking capital to get difficult deals done. For much of the last decade, he lived in Knoxville, a city slightly larger than Pueblo. Their downtown includes a vibrant entertainment district that has a historic theater that does a mix of live performance and film, a repurposed movie theater catering to music acts, an eight-screen first run theater, and a single screen retro movie house that creatively programs film series and avant garde fare. He has an interest in helping the film commission and promoting downtown development. We had a wonderful group of citizens yesterday who are interested in helping Pueblo bring back one of its historic gems. I have also included images of the Opera House including some of the original drawings that Puebloan Margi Grund discovered while she was in Minnesota conducting research on the Nuckolls Packing Company and the architect Hans Peter Henschien. #thefutureofthepast