Denver Union Station great hall Denver Metro Ceramic Art Tile
— — the warmth a great room keeps after dark.
Not only on a wall.
“Denver opened this station in 1881 and rebuilt the centerpiece in 1914 in granite and terra-cotta, a Beaux-Arts hall set on the long axis of 17th Street. For decades it was a working depot growing quieter. The 2014 restoration kept the bones and gave the room back to the city. The orange neon still says Travel by Train. The chandeliers throw the same warm light over leather sofas, shuffleboard tables, long communal tables. People meet there for coffee before the California Zephyr pulls in, or stay until the bar closes. The planners called it Denver's living room. The name stuck.
Denver Union Station great hall Denver Metro Ceramic Art Tile, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Denver Union Station sits in LoDo, Lower Downtown Denver, on the axis of 17th Street at the western foot of the 16th Street Mall. The address is 1701 Wynkoop Street, four blocks from the Colorado State Capitol in the mile-high state capital. The original 1881 depot replaced four separate stations that had served the city's railroads, consolidating them into one terminal. A 1914 rebuild gave the building its current centerpiece, a Beaux-Arts hall by Denver architects Gove & Walsh, flanked by the surviving Romanesque-revival wings of the original station. Today the building is a stop on Amtrak's California Zephyr route from Chicago to the Bay Area, and the hub of the regional RTD commuter rail, light rail, and bus network.
The 1914 center section is Beaux-Arts Neoclassical, built of Colorado granite on a steel frame with terra-cotta detailing, three stories tall and ornamented like a Carnegie library more than a depot. Aaron Gove and Thomas Walsh, the Denver firm responsible for the city's Sugar Building and several other early-twentieth-century landmarks, scaled the hall to handle the swell of passenger traffic Denver was carrying that decade. Inside, a vaulted ceiling rises over the public room, and three large chandeliers hang in the style of the 1914 originals, returned as part of the 2014 restoration. The orange neon Travel by Train sign above each clock dates to 1952, a marketing campaign by the host railroads when rail travel was already losing ground to highways and airlines.
The Great Hall is open 24 hours a day and has been called Denver's living room since the 2014 restoration. The ground-floor public room is also the lobby of the 112-room Crawford Hotel, which occupies the building's upper floors. Long communal tables with outlets, leather sofas, and shuffleboard tables fill the floor. Bars and restaurants line the perimeter, among them Mercantile Dining & Provision, Stoic & Genuine, the Terminal Bar, and the Cooper Lounge. Amtrak's California Zephyr arrives and departs once each direction, daily, on the platforms behind the hall. RTD commuter rail, light rail, and regional buses run from the connected transit center. No admission fee.