Post #811351 by AcmeTiki on Mon, Nov 27, 2023 8:59 AM

Reviving this old thread...

I found a ton of Denver Outrigger and Trader Vic's stuff in the Denver Library archives. I'll post it all here over the next few days.

(Shameless plug... I wrote about the history of the Denver Outrigger and Trader Vic's in issues No. 1&2 of my Denver Tiki Times zine. Click here to check them out: https://tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic_id=54393

These are 4x5 negatives from the Cosmopolitan Hotel lobby and exterior on the corner of 18th and Broadway from 1960. "Ralph Morgan was a commercial photographer in the Denver area. He took photographs of businesses for promotional purposes and was the official photographer for the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Denver, Colorado."

This last photo is a color negative of Trader Vic's exterior entrance in May 1978 shortly before moving to the Denver Hilton.

"Colored transparency collection: Allen Nossaman Book 2 - May 1976. Cosmopolitan Hotel and Metropole Hotel [1890], Denver [Razed]. This entire complex, on Broadway between 17th and 18th Avenues in Denver, was known as the Cosmopolitan Hotel at the time of this photograph. This is the Broadway side of the structures, facing west. The first portion, at the right, had been built as the Metropole Hotel in 1890, containing the luxurious Broadway Theater on the ground floor. The larger section at the left was built in. The Broadway was converted to a motion picture theater, but had been closed and remodeled into Trader Vic's Restaurant by this time. The Metropole was designed by Frank Edbrooke, and was one of the first Western structures to incorporate a finished, frontal light well. (One of the unsolved puzzles about this complex, however, is how the second set of rooms left of the well in the Metropole section came to be; the structure was totally symmetrical when built and as late as 1892. This had to be an addition between 1890 and the erection of the corner section, about which not much seems to be known.) The hotel was still going strong when this view was taken, but the establishment closed New Year's Eve, 1983, and the entire complex was razed in March that year. (Fortunately, I have some later pictures of this complex that are better-exposed.)

[ Edited by AcmeTiki on 2023-11-27 09:04:32 ]

[ Edited by AcmeTiki on 2023-11-27 09:06:26 ]