The YWCA Building

I took this photo yesterday in the early evening, while on a photo shoot. It's the old YWCA Building on the corner of Kiowa and Nevada (130 E. Kiowa). According to this PDF walking tour of downtown Colorado Springs (on the map, click the number 16), it was built in 1912 and designed by Nicholas van den Arend, the same architect who designed our beautiful Van Briggle Pottery building. All that gorgeous tile you see on the facade is Van Briggle. Such a treasure! For many years now, a gay-friendly quasi-goth bar called the Underground has inhabited the bowels of this building. I'm certainly no stranger to the place; in fact the last time I visited there was on Halloween, to see an old friend. The Underground hasn't changed much in the years since I stopped frequenting it so often. I seriously considered renting studio/office space in the YWCA Building at one time. I spent an afternoon checking out all the available space there -- I'd never been anywhere above the Underground, so that was kind of fun. One really neat feature of the YWCA Building at the time (2005-ish) was the fact that it had an old-fashioned cage elevator, and an old-fashioned elevator operator to boot! The nicest elderly lady rode up and down in that thing all day long, asking you what floor you needed and cheerfully depositing you at your destination. There are four or five floors (that's a lot by Colorado Springs standards) and many, many offices in this cool old building. I wonder if the elevator operator still works there? It'd be a shame if she retired!

El Paso County buildings that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Register_of_Historic_Places_listings_in_El_Paso_County,_Colorado

Interesting historical and architectural survey of downtown Colorado Springs: http://www.springsgov.com/plan/historic/documents/RPTCOSPfin.pdf