- The Denver Botanic Gardens is known for its
amazing display of flora and it also boosts one of
the city's most iconic buildings.
The Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory
is renowned for it's daring design and
unique use of concrete.
- In 1973, just seven years after it's completion,
this futuristic building was designated
as a Denver landmark.
Rocky Mountain PBS producer Clarissa Guy explores
the creation of this tropical oasis in the
heart of the city.
(calming music)
- [Man] The origins of the Boettcher Memorial Conservatory
are embedded in aspiration.
Big vision and big risk.
There is not another conservatory like it in the world.
It is the only one of its kind.
- When it was built, it was the only tropical conservatory
between Missouri and San Francisco.
- [Man] Boettcher Conservatory is made of faceted
plexiglass panels between interfaced concrete arches
and an inverted catenary curve that arcs 50 feet above
the tropical gardens.
The Boettcher's paid for it as the name Boettcher
Conservatory would tell you and they insisted on
using Ideal Cement, which was a Boettcher owned company.
- It's the only concrete conservatory in the United States,
making it really unique and it's the work of two
architects, Victor Hornbein and Ed White.
- [Woman] Victor Hornbein loved cathedrals and he loved
nature and gardens, so he brought together in concrete
that whole idea of vaulted ceilings, it's really intended
as a reflection of that kind of grandeur of the vaulting
of European cathedrals but done in concrete.
Concrete actually goes back to the ancient Egyptians,
so it's not a new medium, but doing vaulted arches
like that was very new.
(calming music)
- [Man] I think that if you were going to select
a material to construct a conservatory from,
concrete would probably have to be the most difficult
material you could pick.
- I mean, how do you create a forum place strut of concrete
50 feet in the air?
I don't know how you do that.
It's what they did.
- [Man] You have to build a form and then pour the
concrete in to that forum while it hardens, so
they essentially had to build the greenhouse twice.
The first time out of wood and then the second
time out of concrete.
- And Victor Hornbein, the architect, was a fan of
Frank Lloyd Wright and his notion of craft and detail,
and so he picked up the use of this concrete in a very
special way that has again never been accomplished anywhere
else that I know of, not only in the structure of the
conservatory, but all of the buildings surrounding
the conservatory in a board form manner.
This was quite radical at the time.
Even the lamp posts and the surrounding rocks and gardens
are in concrete trees, lamp posts designed as trees
and the lights are the fruits on those trees.
- [Woman] And each of the plexiglass panels was
a mold of it's own and it was built in such a way
that the condensation from the tropical conservatory
would not stagnate and fall on people's heads, but it
would go through the sides of each of those panels.
- [Man] Imagine creating this ground plane and this
series of rooms that would be perfectly balanced
with this amazing new aspirational form that really
represented all of what nature provides us in
an interior setting, in the harsh climate of
Denver of course.
- [Woman] The Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory
consists of tropical plants from all over the world,
from the tropical regions.
(calming music)
- [Man] Around 2,000 horticultural species are
cultivated amid waterfalls and pools constructed
in a sloped, naturalistic environment inside the
humid, warm conservatory.
- [Man] And imagine this in winter and the inspiration
that it would bring to children and young adults
and to all members of Denver society and the citizens
of Colorado and now the west.
- [Man] The Denver Landmark Preservation Division
designated this futuristic structure only nine years
after it was designed.
Structures like this, they really speak to the time
that they are built and they help us understand really
what was going on in society at that time.
This is a beautiful example of 1960's architecture.
It speaks to the emergence of modernism and the
belief in the future of this country.
Our optimism in America's future and the need to
build beautiful structures out of solid materials
that will last for many generations to come.
- [Man] The jewel right in the middle of the city,
what a wonderful gift.
- You can visit Denver Botanic Gardens in person
or online at botanicgardens.org.
- Our Colorado Experience Team Mates explore the
whole history of the gardens in a special upcoming
episode, rmpbs.org/coloradoexperience is where you can
find that and much, much more.