Snapshot: The Denver Auditorium and Auditorium Arena
Just missing an Independence Day debut, Mayor Robert Speer opened the Denver Municipal Auditorium with a free concert on July 5, 1908; a few days later, on July 9 and 10, the auditorium played host to the Democratic National Convention. Noting that the new building was largest auditorium west of the Mississippi River (only New York’s Madison Square Garden was larger), The Denver Post called the auditorium the “most perfect convention hall in the country” while the St. Louis Globe Democrat raved about the building’s “wonderful acoustics” and “beautiful proportions” (qtd. in Noel 33, 34).
The attention gained from hosting the DNC put Denver’s new landmark on the “national convention and cultural-center map,” says University of Colorado at Denver Professor Thomas Noel, attracting two conventions a month (on average) and everything from circuses and horse shows to National Guard drills and Boy Scout expositions (37). From the beginning, however, musical entertainments took center stage at the auditorium: operas, Sunday evening concerts, symphony orchestra performances, and promoter Arthur Oberfelder’s long-running concert series — which brought to Denver performers such as Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, Liberace, and Arthur Rubenstein — dominated the auditorium’s event calendar (43).
An addition to the auditorium was completed in 1952, adding 7,500 fixed seats and doubling the size of the facility. This addition, known as the Auditorium Arena, along with extensive renovations to the auditorium’s theater in 1956, set the stage for the arrival of California promoter Robert Garner, whose successful Robert Garner Attractions introduced a variety of high-profile entertainments to Denver concert-goers and socialites for the first time. Not only presenting musicals, plays, and Broadway shows, Garner regularly presented single-evening concerts featuring notable performers like Judy Garland, The Supremes, and Luciano Pavarotti (Noel 47). The arena addition also supplied, just in the nick of time, ample space for performers and followers of a powerfully stirring new music sweeping the country — rock ‘n roll.
In 1957, three of rock ‘n roll’s founding fathers graced the Auditorium Arena’s stage: Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and, in November, Buddy Holly & the Crickets — scarcely a year before the plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa, that killed Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper. Before the fifties were over, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other country rockers had visited the auditorium and rocked the people of Denver. The sixties saw an endless parade of rock royalty visit the Auditorium Arena, from The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and Iron Butterfly to The Kinks, Cream, and Led Zeppelin, while the seventies saw one important rock act after another pass through Denver and the auditorium — John Denver, Elton John, and Cat Stevens, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Montrose, and Deep Purple, Nazareth, Yes, and Ted Nugent. Even after the construction of McNichols Sports Arena in 1975, which seated nearly 18,000 and became Denver’s new go-to facility for the biggest rock bands and hottest shows, all sorts of major rock bands still played at the Auditorium Arena; acts like Rush, Styx, Foghat, Uriah Heep, Molly Hatchet, and Prince held sold-out shows at the auditorium until the arena was gutted and remodeled in 1990.
The former Auditorium and Auditorium Arena still stand. Both are now a part of the sprawling Denver Performing Arts Complex — the auditorium, since 2005, home to the Ellie Caulkins Opera House and the arena, since 1991, home to the Temple Hoyne Buell Theater. Though perhaps difficult to appreciate the buildings’ immense historical significance today, with the massive glass-canopied galleria and adjacent architectural wonders overshadowing the old structures, the auditorium and arena hold more than a century of important Denver entertainment history — a rich and vibrant legacy that laid the foundation for Denver’s thriving performing-arts community, helping make it the nationally-recognized success it is today.
Above piece excerpted from the forthcoming It’s Only Music: A Musical and Historical Memoir.
