Denver Public Library
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Denver Public Library
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Nameplate on the Central library's 1955 building
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| Location | 1357 Broadway |
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| Coordinates | 39°44′15″N 104°59′17″W / 39.73750°N 104.98806°WCoordinates: 39°44′15″N 104°59′17″W / 39.73750°N 104.98806°W |
| Area | Less than one acre |
| Built | 1955 |
| Architect | Burnham Hoyt, et al. |
| Architectural style | International Style |
| NRHP Reference # | 90001345 |
| Added to NRHP | 6 December 1990 |
Denver Public Library is the public library system of the City and County of Denver, Colorado. The system includes the Denver Central Library, located in the Golden Triangle District of Downtown Denver, as well as 25 branch locations and two bookmobiles. The library’s collection totals more than 2 million items, including books, reference materials, movies, music, and photographs. Of that total, more than 347,000 items are in specific collections including the Western History and Genealogy Department, Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, and Reference Department holdings.
The library was established in June 1889 by City Librarian John Cotton Dana in a wing of Denver High School. In 1910, the library acquired a building of its own, a Greek revival design funded by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie that was located in Civic Center Park in downtown. Between 1913 and 1920, Carnegie also underwrote construction of the library's first eight branches. Previously the city relied on traveling trunks of books.
In the 1950s the city commissioned the architectural firm Fisher & Fisher and designer Burnham Hoyt to build a new Central Library to be located on Broadway and West 14th Avenue. The property had previously been an auto dealership for the Ford Model T, Model A, and Model B before being condemned by the City in 1953. The Fisher/Hoyt Central Library in the city's Golden Triangle opened in 1955 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. In the 1990s Denver voters approved a $91.6 million bond issue to add onto the Fisher/Hoyt building; the new 540,000-square-foot (50,000 m2) structure, designed by architect Michael Graves and the Denver firm of Klipp Colussy Jenks DuBois, opened in 1995.
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