Zeckendorf

by William Zeckendorf

  I had met B. B. casually once or twice before. He was in his sixties, with deep-sunken eyes and dark, mottled skin that clung to the bone. B. B. was a sight to frighten children and unready men; he looked like a messenger from some more desolate part of the afterworld, but if he was as lean as a mummy and twice as dry in the throat, he had imagination and aggressiveness, which I liked, and now he was here to propose a deal. Putting a map and various photographs of Denver on my desk, he pointed out a small city-block park called Court House Square. It was the site of the old Denver Court House, which, during the 1920's, had been torn down and rebuilt elsewhere. The plot had been on the market for years, with no active bidders since a California group offering $650,000 had been turned down sometime before World War II. B. B. had been talking with Denver's mayor, Benjamin Stapleton, and said we could probably get the property for $750,000.

  From what B. B. could tell me and from what showed on the map and photographs, I could see that Court House Square was in the line of progress, possibly rapid progress. Changes in Denver, in my judgment, would inevitably move toward the square. The property was no longer in a prime location, but it had potential (depending upon what the town did) for the future. What the town did, of course, was the crux of the matter, and unfortunately Denver was so static that the center had not moved for forty years, nor had there been one significant new building in central Denver in at least thirty years. Nonetheless, I knew what was going on around the country, and more important, I also knew what would be going on in future. If local realtors couldn't or wouldn't see the growth getting under way around them, we could. From as far away as New York I could envision Court House Square as a choice property. Even the fact that nothing vital had happened to Denver real estate in forty years had its positive side: holding down the lid for such a long time meant that there was a demand waiting to be tapped. All we had to do was get into that town and make something happen. That afternoon I authorized B. B. Harding to make a $750,000 bid. This he went home to do, and shortly thereafter the fun began.

  By the first part of May, with the Denver papers carrying banner headlines of Von Rundstedt's capture and of German surrenders in Italy, word that an "eastern" group had bid on Court House Square began to filter through from the back pages to the front. By May 5, 1945, with Allied forces taking Rangoon and U.S. troops fighting in Okinawa, an ordinance calling for sale of the square went before the city council, and word was out that the buyer was Webb & Knapp. The Denver garden clubs, I think, were among the first publicly to denounce the proposed sale, but similar groups of righteous citizens soon banded together in opposition to any and all intrusions by foreigners from the east.

  In spite of these preliminary protests, the council on May 22 passed the necessary legislation for a sale. On May 23 Webb & Knapp announced a survey to determine what kind of top retail stores might be interested in building in the area. We soon had to stop this sort of thing. The issue of Court House Square was beginning to affect some of the local citizens in much the way General Custer's golden locks and famous promenade to the Big Horn had once affected the Indians to the north. New and apparently well-organized and financed protest groups kept popping out to decry the impending "sellout." A self-proclaimed protective taxpayers' association sprang forward to ask for an injunction against the sale, and at the same time a syndicate of local realtors, who had managed to ignore Court House Square for twenty years, suddenly offered a counterbid of $765,000. At about this point, like the beleaguered General Custer at the Big Horn, I was beginning to wonder where all the Indians were coming from, and my ally, Mayor Stapleton, at whom most of the arrows were directed, probably felt the same. In any event, the mayor had to back away from our previously agreed-on sale and to call for separate, sealed bids. I then made a second offer, and on June 7, when the bids were opened, we were top contenders, with a bid of $792,500 as opposed to the local offer of $777,700. As someone started to congratulate my representative, B. B. Harding, on our winning, one of the opposition lawyers jumped in to challenge our bid on a technicality. After a certain amount of bickering back and forth, our bid and a second on-the-spot bid of $805,000 by one of the leaders of a local group were rejected, and yet another series of sealed bids was called for. This next time we bid $818,600, as against the local group's $808,000; and so, once again, we won the contest—but not the prize, which continued to elude us.

  The battle for Court House Square was to occupy us for four more years. Several separate local suits were filed to block our taking possession of the site. We had an excellent lawyer in Allen Hicks, a Denver man, and chain-smoking, bourbon-sipping B. B. Harding knew the inner workings of the town and state far better than he was generally given credit for. So we dug in and held on through these multiple assaults. What with appeals, recalls, and parades of witnesses and experts before the judges, we had to fight sixteen separate court actions. We lost some of these cases on the way up, but we always won the last appeal. It was not until December, 1948, that we cleared the list of all our court contenders. And it was not till close to the end of 1949, well over four years and $150,000 in court costs after our first bid, that we could take over our property.

  In retrospect, I suspect that if certain people had let me know that they did not wish that property sold, and least of all sold to a Zeckendorf from New York, I just might have taken my marbles elsewhere. Instead, as we moved into the deal, I ran into back-door insinuations as well as accusations that we were crooked and that I was trying to buy the mayor, who was one of the most high-principled and honest men you could find in public office. This is what decided me then and there to make a fight of it. As early as August, 1945, partly on the reasoning that if Court House Square was a good buy, other properties near it were worth having, and partly to let the local boys know that we were in town for keeps, I bought two adjoining properties, the Kitteredge and Paramount Theatre buildings, on Glenarm Place near Sixteenth Street for $600,000. With control of these two buildings, I might be able to make a major assembly on that block. In 1946 we bought property on Welton Street, and I kept shopping around. Early in 1948, for instance, we picked up seven lots on Court Place across the street from Court House Square. With these purchases and our continuous search and testing out of the market, it soon became clear to everyone that we were in Denver in earnest and in a big way. It was we who were establishing the prices of the local real estate; and things were actually beginning to stir in that sleepy town.

  Usually, since our activities moved real-estate prices well above their previously low levels, the stirrings about town were happy ones, but there were some disgruntled remarks about the change, and occasionally a sense of outrage. During these early days, B. B. Harding was "our man in Denver." He broke all stories of purchases and of possible purchases. He released all information about our evolving hopes and plans for setting up retail stores, hotels, offices, or some combination of these on our properties. B. B., now a news source, enjoyed this role immensely but did not let it in any way change his ways. If anything, he grew even more "independent," and this led to the Chamber of Commerce incident. By way of preface, I should note that Denver, up to this writing, has been able to maintain something that is increasingly rare in American cities: it is a two-newspaper city with quite avid competition between the morning Rocky Mountain News and the afternoon Denver Post. Either by the accidents of timing or of B. B. Harding's not always predictable caprice, the Post had been picking up a number of stories ahead of The Rocky Mountain News. One of the News editors therefore sent a reporter down to B. B. Harding's office to lodge an informal complaint and ask for a better break on news leads.

  As I understand it, B. B., having enjoyed a good lunch and a couple of cocktails, sat with his feet on his desk as the reporter made his comments and request. Then, carried away by his own sense of drama, B. B., leaning far back in his seat, pointed a bony, cigarette-stained hand at the door and announced, "Why, if your editor was to crawl across that threshold . . . on his hands
and knees . . . I still wouldn't give him a news break."

  The reporter, unaccustomed in this age of public relations and concern with "image" to the histrionics of the old frontier, was taken aback. Searching for some proper rebuttal, he darkly mentioned that the Denver Chamber of Commerce would certainly be interested to learn that one of its businessmen felt that way. But this was like spurting gasoline at an already sputtering lighter. An inflamed B. B. Harding, feet on floor now, and leaning far forward on his desk, began to roar out his highly personal and colorful opinions of the Denver Chamber of Commerce as a whole and of its more august members in particular. He wound up with a brief phrase, beloved of presidents and mule skinners alike, to describe the pedigree of these gentlemen. The reporter, who had come in for a story, was smart enough to know when he had one. The next day The Rocky Mountain News carried a special feature bearing an only partially edited selection of B. B.'s comments and opinions of the Chamber.

  Naturally there was an uproar in certain circles. I decided I had better fly out to Denver to soothe those hurt feelings with soft words. I assured the honorable members of the Chamber that B. B.'s opinions were strictly his own and that I personally had no information about any of them and therefore had no basis for such unfriendly comments. Moreover, I told them, it was pretty obvious I felt Denver was a wonderful place with a great future, as witness our investments in the city and our great plans for its future.

  It was during this and a great many subsequent trips to Denver that I got to know something of the town and its inner workings, which were much influenced by its location and early history.

  Denver is situated on a mile-high plain at the edge of the Rockies. With the main mountain passes and railroad routes well to the north and south of it, the town flourished after building its own railroad and linking it to other areas and systems. Because of its geographically central location in sparsely settled country, it came to exercise a modest sovereignty over its own state and nearby segments of adjoining states. Gold, silver, and mineral wealth from the Rockies were important, especially in the early days. Like Tucson, Denver became a supply point for a ring of satellite mining camps and towns during the hyperactive days of the 1870's and 1880's. It was to Denver that silver-rich Horace Tabor went to build his famous opera house. By then the handsomely furnished Windsor Hotel, financed by English money, was already delighting local and visiting nabobs and their ladies, with refreshments at its famous Silver Dollar Bar for the men, and gala affairs for ladies in its fabulous ballroom, with a dance floor suspended from the ceiling by cables to permit gracefully floating waltzes. Farther uptown, the Palace Hotel, with its grand, open lobby, also catered to the new-rich carriage trade. Denver, though still a raw town, even by Western standards, was acquiring patina with all the speed and fervor of a modern-day suburbanite antiquing her furniture. When the manager of the Brown Palace Hotel came up to complain about a party that the newly rich Pegleg Stratton was throwing, Pegleg did buy the hotel for one million dollars in order to fire the manager—but Pegleg was never "accepted" in Denver. Neither were Leadville Johnny, the silver-rich original owner of the hotel, nor his wife, the wonderful Unsinkable Molly Brown. Molly Brown might delight European and some portions of Eastern U.S. society, but she was much too yeasty for Denver's newly risen provincial society.

  The Brown Palace Hotel is still in operation. In fact, till I put up the Denver Hilton, Brown's Hotel was the top hostelry in that town.

  But Denver's days of flash and fame were brief. The era of gold and silver and guts and brass lasted only a few short decades, after which Denver, slipping fast into respectability, became famous mostly as a salubrious town for those stricken by tuberculosis.

  The town was ever further quieted by the Depression of the 1930's, and it was not until World War II that it began to bloom again. With oil discoveries continuing in the continental United States, and with the development of the Williston basin to the north, Denver's central location and the spread of air travel made it a natural candidate to become one of the secondary oil capitals of the country. Tourism had also grown, and almost by seepage, as it were, Denver began to enjoy an invisible boom. I say "invisible" because for so many years, at least in the center of town, nothing showed. With general population rising and with various service industries moving into town and seeking space, the downtown properties were renting nicely, with little or no further investment needed by the owners. The return on investment on these properties, in terms of the original investments of many years ago, were excellent. Why, therefore, rock the boat? Better a tight and assuredly profitable real-estate market than an open and uncertain one. The logic was admirably conservative. It was also utterly unrealistic, for these gentlemen were overlooking some key points. For instance, they were consistently overlooking the even greater return on investment that imaginative new building efforts in Denver might develop. And with their eyes fixed on individual properties in Denver rather than on overall possibilities of the Denver area, they ignored all the many opportunities they were offered. If met imaginatively, these regional opportunities could propel Denver to a new position in the mainstream of American cities. If nothing were done, this growth and vitality would be transferred elsewhere. Only Denver's major property holders in conjunction with the local banks (which they controlled), could generate the capital and momentum to get Denver moving purposefully with the times, but this group was not about to act. This resistance to change could be easily ticked off to the Denver elite's liking of things as they were. But beneath this comfortable inertia there were ramifications, some of which were disquieting and bear unveiling.

  Over the years we at Webb & Knapp have dealt with the official as well as non-official civic leaders of a great many cities. In almost every instance our presence has involved close dealings with the political and economic heart of a town, attracting support from those interested in what we could do for their city as well as what we could do for them. There was always resistance from those who might be upset by our plans. Denver was merely the first of such ventures for us, but a closer look at parts of the very special background of Denver will, I think, help later to explain something of other cities and perhaps about America as a whole, because as cities go, Denver, like a cartoonist's sketch, is a simplified and exaggerated but recognizable caricature of a type.

  Some twenty local families in effect owned and sometimes directly, though more often indirectly, ran the town. Their management of the city's affairs was essentially passive and unobtrusive and kept most potentially rebellious voters, like the town itself, quiescent. Welded together by time and social contact, where not knitted together by intermarriage, Denver's top families generally felt, thought, and acted (or more usually chose not to act) as a group.

  What was most striking to an outsider about Denver's inner circle was its determined shunning of much of the outside world. Denver's local elite, socially inbred and (with individual exceptions) largely inward-looking, tended to share a highly self-conscious illusion of class and pretensions of place that in much of the East and parts of the West would seem ludicrous but which in segments of Denver were taken quite seriously.

  A degree of small-town snobbishness and country-club-thinking is ever with us, but in an important capital city, where it reigned supreme, it was deleterious, for the underlying values evolved by the small group that controlled the town had a flavor of class-consciousness and restriction which was highly undemocratic.

  In the light of all the above, it was inevitable, too, that a forceful move into the area by a Zeckendorf, a Jewish realtor from New York, would create even greater resentment and unease. The irony that my ancestors had been pioneering on the Western frontier before theirs had even got out there could only further aggravate some of these politely bigoted people. I did, however, win my battle for Court House Square. And, inadvertently, I did for a time split the ranks of Denver's ruling circles. This drew me even further into Denver operations than I had intended, and it happened
as the court battles came to an end, when Claude Boettcher, one of Denver's elite, called me by phone.

  I was in my New York office when I received the call that started me on an unexpected phase of our Denver operations. A very hoarse, very powerful voice said, "This is Claude Boettcher."

  I said, "Yes, Mr. Boettcher."

  "I'm in town at my apartment." (An enormously wealthy man with widespread interests, including an investment company with a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, Boettcher kept a duplex suite in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel.) "I'd like to come down and see you," he said.

  "Mr. Boettcher, if you are in town, let me come to see you." But he insisted on coming to my office, and in a short while showed up. As I went around my desk to greet him, I saw a giant of a man who appeared to be twenty to twenty-five years my senior, possibly sixty-four years old, but a tremendous man, great height, broad shoulders, heavyset—obviously a man who indulged himself in the pleasures of life. He sat down, saying, "I congratulate you on your victory on Court House Square."

  I thanked him, admitting that it had been quite a fight, when he asked if I had any idea who financed the different organizations that fought Webb & Knapp. I had to plead ignorance, at which he gave a half-smile, saying, "I come from the school of life that says when you lose to a man you don't fight him anymore, you join him. I'd like to know if you'd like to join me in continuing to develop Denver; I'll help you, and you help me." I said this would be a great thing, that I would be happy to do it, and we began to lay plans for working in tandem. We agreed that I would throw Court House Square into a combined operation with him, including some good property he held on Denver's Broadway and Seventeenth Avenue across the street from the famous Brown Palace Hotel, which he now owned. Eventually, at his urging, I agreed that we should develop the Broadway property first, though I could continue to line things up for a massive project on Court House Square.