8 MAY 16-22, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Checking Out BOULDER GIVES A DEVELOPER PERMISSION TO DEMOLISH THE LEGENDARY HARVEST HOUSE. BY CATIE C HESHIRE The Millennium Harvest House, a fi xture in Boulder since 1959, will soon be demolished and replaced with student housing for the University of Colorado. Boulder’s historic preservation program and planning board have approved the demo- lition, but some people argue that the build- ing’s destruction will erase an important piece of history, including historian Carol Taylor, who has documented the progress of the hotel from dirt lot to golf course to soon-to-be construction site. After gaining approval from the City of Boulder in August 2023, Georgia-based developer Landmark Properties offi cially purchased the hotel and the lot it sits on at 1345 28th Street in January for $71.9 million. The project proposes constructing three four-story buildings that will house 900 bedrooms — and remove the mid-century modernist Harvest House. Taylor was hired in 2009, when the ho- tel turned fi fty, to catalogue its history. She resumed that project in 2021 after hearing of the demolition plans while researching a different project at the Carnegie Library for Local History in Boulder. After more research, Taylor believes the Harvest House should be preserved, despite a decision from the city stating that the physical characteristics of the building no longer maintain its historic character. “At the time, it was a state-of-the-art modernist building, and it was going to be on the highway. It was really important because of automobile travel and summer tourists,” Taylor says. “It’s just a really big part of Boul- der, so many milestones were celebrated there.” She documents those milestones in her manuscript, The Rise and Fall of Boulder’s Legendary Harvest House Hotel. The architect for the building was Ralph Peterson, who also designed four buildings at the University of Colorado and other im- portant structures across the state, such as the Colorado State Hospital in Pueblo and the Denver Federal Center. “Peterson architects designed a bold fi ve-story curved structure that embraced the natural beauty of Boulder Creek and allowed for a spectacular view of Boulder’s mountain backdrop, including the iconic sandstone slabs known as the Flatirons,” Taylor wrote in her manuscript. After a grand opening in January 1960, the Harvest House became a cultural hub, with ballet shows, fashion luncheons and diving exhibitions in the pool to complement the conferences and business meetings that occurred at the hotel. Scientists also frequented the hotel, a fact that Taylor argues should have factored into its preservation. The Harvest House hosted visi- tors from the National Bureau of Standards, the Atomic Energy Commission at Rocky Flats, the Ball Brothers Research Corporation and more. Hometown astronaut Scott Carpen- ter had his welcome-home press conference there after returning from his mission to orbit the Earth in the Aurora 7 capsule in 1962. The hotel was built at an important time for the city, as the Hotel Boulderado had fallen into disrepair, leaving Boulder without an acceptable place to host large groups of visitors. For a while, it was the closest place to the city to get a drink, as Boulder was still under alcohol prohibition until 1967 and the hotel technically sat outside city limits. “The property had become a twenty-acre ‘island,’ completely surrounded by City of Boulder land,” Taylor writes. In 1967, Boulder voted to allow the sale of liquor, and the Harvest House was annexed into the city. Waylon Jennings performed there in 1975; after that, the owners instituted live theater on the fi fth fl oor, with a dining room and lounges rebuilt in 1976 and other outdoor amenities added shortly after. At the time, the hotel was owned by Tony Seibert, who gave a $15,000 donation to help get alternative radio station KGNU started. He also allowed the sta- tion to broadcast from a Harvest House-owned bungalow, according to Taylor’s manuscript. Lots of legendary parties happened at the Harvest House, especially after the advent of the Friday Afternoon Club, boisterous gatherings of culture and merriment. Some were documented in Newsweek, where al- legations of rampant drug use caused a stir in the community. In 1980, further renovations occurred that would later become the reason the hotel can be destroyed. Ownership added two stories to the wings of the Harvest House, closed off many of the decorative balconies and encased much of the building in stucco. The hotel’s name was offi cially changed to the Millennium Harvest House in 2002 after it was acquired by London-based Millennium & Copthorne Hotels in 1999. It stayed that way until the sale closed in January, after the city had determined it didn’t quality for preservation because it had lost is architec- tural integrity. “Due to a loss of integrity... the hotel does not qualify for listing in the National Register of Historic Places or the State Register of Historic Properties,” found a report that city offi cials required on the building’s history. “Nor does it qualify for landmark designation by the City of Boulder.” While Taylor takes issue with the devel- oper paying for that report, the city’s Historic Preservation staff came to the same conclusion when it reviewed the demolition application. “Many of us involved in local history just took it for granted that the Harvest House would be a landmark,” Taylor says. “It was a no-brainer. It had everything required to be a landmark and had so much infl uence on shaping the city. When it didn’t get land- marked, I was just stunned.” The city’s review process considers the architectural, historic and environmental signifi cance of a building as well as its in- tegrity, “which means that it hasn’t been changed so much over time that it no longer carries that architectural signifi cance that it had,” explains Marcy Gerwing, principal planner with the City of Boulder. That’s where the Harvest House lost out. “It was a challenging one to review, because it was one of the most iconic mid-century buildings in Boulder, and it had historic signifi cance for the cultural center that it was,” Gerwing continues. “But because the building had been changed frequently in the ’80s, after making site visits and doing photo comparisons and researching the history, our determination was the building had been changed so much that it no longer conveyed its historic signifi cance.” Taylor points to the landmarking of the Marpa House in Boulder, a Buddhist living center and former Jewish fraternity that had major alterations but was still designated as a landmark in 2020 because of its importance to Buddhist history in Boulder. “There were so many changes to that building over time, and it still went through landmarking, no problem,” Taylor says. “So it’s just got to be about the money, right?” Boulder has a long-stated need for more housing, particularly affordable housing. Landmark Properties will pay the city cash in lieu of building affordable housing on the Harvest House site. The city can then use that money to build affordable housing elsewhere — but Taylor contends that the Harvest House could have been transitioned to housing. “The saddest thing is that Boulder didn’t have to choose between preservation and housing on this one,” she says. “You could have had both. You could have had preservation and you could have had housing and sustainability. … Then Boulder would be living up to all of the values that it says it has.” Historic Boulder, a nonprofi t dedicated to historic preservation in the city, publicly questioned the proposal to destroy the Har- vest House in 2022, but didn’t initiate the landmark process. (The organization did not reply to multiple requests for comment.) Taylor says she’s disappointed that no other organizations dedicated to architecture or history in Boulder stepped up to fi ght for the hotel to gain landmark status. Only groups, not individuals, can fi le landmark applications in Boulder, so Taylor couldn’t do it herself. “What [Taylor] has written is a really kind of beautiful tribute to this building,” Ger- wing says. “We wouldn’t expect a building, whether it’s fi fty years old or 150 years old, to be exactly how it was when it was built. … There’s not, like, a mathematical equation to say, ‘Well, if you have X amount of mate- rial left, it has integrity or not.’ It’s more of a judgment call.” Taylor is waiting sadly for the day demoli- tion begins, which will be the fi nal chapter in her manuscript. “There are lots of people who have such fond memories of the Harvest House, and there are lots of people who know its signifi cance in shaping Boulder, and there are people who need to know it,” she says. “It just makes me sad every time I talk about it. I get angry and then I get sad, but I think it’s a done deal.” Landmark Properties has not yet announced a demolition date. Email the author at [email protected]. NEWS KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS The Harvest House advertised its amenities in this 1960s postcard. BOULDER HISTORICAL SOCIETY
