6 westword.com WESTWORD DECEMBER 18-24, 2025 | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | A Sporting Chance THE LEGENDARY SPORTS CASTLE COULD BEING ITS SECOND CENTURY WITH A NEW OWNER. BY BENNITO L. KELT Y Life won’t end at 100 for the Sports Castle, an unoffi cial landmark at 1000 Broadway. Longtime Denver residents might remem- ber buying discount skis or Converse shoes at the Sports Castle, a giant sporting goods store founded by the Gart family that ultimately merged with Sports Authority, which shut down in 2016. After that, the three-and-a-half- story structure was used for a variety of parties and events. Non Plus Ultra, a San Francisco production company, started booking the building in 2021; for the fi rst two weekends in December, it hosted a Christmas market. These events gave people a glimpse of what was inside the Castle’s gothic exterior, and hinted at its century-old history. The day before the market reopened on December 12, BusinessDen broke the news that Seattle-based outdoor gear and apparel retailer Evo hopes to buy the iconic property. In an email to Westword, Evo CEO and founder Bryce Phillips says that the best way to get a sense of what’s coming to the Sports Castle is to look at Evo’s existing projects around the country, including the Granary Campus in Salt Lake City and the existing Evo outlet at 860 Broadway. “We are really inspired by the opportunity to bring the Sports Castle back to life, love the building, love the location, and want to be a part of making the corridor more vibrant over the years to come,” Phillips says. “That said, we have work to do with regards to ensuring it’s viable from a redevelopment perspective, so we’ve started that process.” Evo would be buying the property from Hyder Construction, which paid $6.5 million for it in 2021. The retailer reported about $200 million in total revenue in 2024, largely through online sales. The new ownership would be coming in just as the Sports Castle marks its 100th anniversary, in a year that coincides with Colorado’s quincentennial and the national semiquincentennial The Cathedrals of Automobile Row The Sports Castle started out in 1926 as the Cullen-Thompson Motor Company, a Chrysler dealership. It opened at a time when Broadway from 14th Avenue to Cherry Creek was known as “automobile row.” Several of the auto-oriented buildings from that time remain. At the corner of Sixth Avenue and Broadway, the Leeman Auto Company sold DeSotos and Plymouths; today, the former dealership hosts a Chipotle and Cava Mediterranean. The current West- word offi ces at 1278 Lincoln Street occupy the 103-year-old Dodge Building, which was a prestigious Dodge dealership. Before Westword moved, it was located kitty-corner from the Sports Castle in a former Willys- Overland dealership. Howard Lorton Furniture & Design at 12th Avenue and Broadway used to be a dealership for Studebakers, the curvy cars popular in the 1940s and ‘50s, before the building became a furniture gallery. Accord- ing to the Colorado Automotive Hall of Fame, Frank C. Cullen commissioned that building in 1921 as the Automobile Sales Corporation. In 1925, Walter Chrysler started the Chrysler Corporation, and Cullen partnered with one of his top Studebaker salesmen, Ward J. Thompson, to bring the new luxury brand to Denver. Although J.M. Hyder had designed the Studebaker dealership, for their new en- terprise Cullen and Thompson went with Chicago-born architect Jacques Benedict, who had been living in Denver since 1909 and was a student of the Ecole Beaux Arts. By the time Cullen and Thompson came to him in 1925, Benedict had already de- signed the Washington Park Boat Pavilion, Park Hill Elementary School and the south wing of the Richthofen Castle, among other sites now on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1926, Benedict lost a bid to design the new Denver City and County Building af- ter he suggested a 35-story, gothic skyscraper similar to Chicago’s Tribune Tower. (Then- Mayor Benjamin Stapleton chose Edward Bennett’s Neoclassical design instead.) Benedict’s Baroque European style was ideal for the Cullen-Thompson Motor Company, though. At the time, auto dealers “were fi ercely competitive for customers, and a new architecture, dubbed ‘cathedrals of commerce,” emerged to showcase and sell the automobile,” according to the Golden Triangle Creative District. Benedict gave the new dealership at Tenth and Broadway stained-glass win- dows, a grand white staircase, and ornamen- tal columns and arches inside its spacious 100,000 square-foot interior; the exterior was surrounded by plaster and terra cotta. It cost $71,000 to design and build, or about $1.3 million today. Walter Chrysler attended the building’s opening in the spring of 1926, and the structure’s elegance helped it be- come one of the most successful Chrysler dealerships and distributors in the country, according to the Colorado Automotive Hall of Fame. Thompson managed the dealership for 28 years, expanding its offerings to Plymouths and Dodges. He died in 1954, and Cullen ran the place until he sold the business in 1963 to successful car dealer Fo Farland and Temple Buell Jr., the son of well-known Denver ar- chitect and namesake of the Buell Theater, Temple Hoyne Buell. The dealership continued to sell Chrys- lers and Plymouths. It was the oldest Chrys- ler dealership in the country when it was sold in 1971 to a well-established, locally owned sporting goods company, Gart Bros. That ended the building’s 45-year history as a car dealership. From Chyslers to Converse When Gart Bros. bought the Cullen-Thomp- son Motor Company building, the sporting goods company had been around for about as long as the dealership, starting with a downtown pawn shop in 1928. According to a 1998 entry in the International Directory of Company Histories, Nathan Gart, the son of a Russian immigrant, started the store in a rinky-dink 12-by-17-foot spot at 1648 Larimer Street that he bought for $500. “With $33 in fi shing equipment as his inventory and high hopes, he opened Gart Bros., a family sporting goods store special- izing in hunting, fi shing, and camping sup- plies,” according to the 1998 directory. “Gart was creative in his use of the cramped store. He, for example, lined boxes of ammunition on the fl oor, thereby creating both storage space and a new fl oor at the same time. His fi rst sale was a pocket knife.” Along with brothers George, Kirby and Melvin, Nathan Gart incorporated the busi- ness in 1946 as Gart Bros. Sporting Goods Company. The NEWS continued on page 8 KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS The Sports Castle, at 1000 Broadway, will turn 100 in 2026. In 1930, the Cullen Thompson Motor Company was a new Chrysler dealership. BENNITO L. KELT Y COURTESY OF THE DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY
