On your right, look for the tall, buff-colored tower with strong vertical lines and step-back tiers, sitting on a darker stone base like it means business.
This is the Mountain States Telephone Building at 931 14th Street... a 15-story monument to the moment Denver got modern. It opened in 1929 as the headquarters for Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph, later “Mountain Bell,” and it wasn’t just office space-it was built to bring dial telephone service to Denver for the first time. No more operator. Please hold. Suddenly, you could call someone directly, which probably doubled the city’s daily arguments.
Architect William N. Bowman dressed the building in what the company proudly called “Modern American Perpendicular Gothic”-basically Gothic Revival with skyscraper swagger: setbacks, vertical punch, and terra cotta cladding over a pink granite base. It earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
If you can peek toward the entry, there are 13 telecommunications-history murals painted in 1929 by Allen Tupper True-like an illustrated user manual for the wired age.
Ready for Boettcher Concert Hall? Just walk southeast for 4 minutes.
