5 REASONS WHY WE PRINTERS CARE ABOUT A RR DEPOT

And why we are asking for your help during Colorado Gives & beyond…

#1 It started as just being pragmatic – we know of too many community print shops and museums forced to move from their rented spaces; we wanted to find a home for our living letterpress museum that we could own, in every sense of the word.

#2  We then fell in love with the  1915 Englewood Depot and the fact it’s only one of two remaining Mission Style Santa Fe Railroad buildings in the country.

#3  There’s a lot of synergy between our depot and letterpress— they share a time period of glory, an historic legacy and artistic overlap. Railroads and letterpress printing both played large roles in the history of the West. And they both use very heavy equipment!

#4  We believe the way to preserve the legacy and the history of type is to use it, to bring traditional knowledge into the 21st century imagination. The same applies to a building. It is only brought to life by adaptive and creative re-use, while remembering its past.

#5  Besides preserving traditional printing and an iconic building, we also have become the home for the presses and typefaces once used by Colorado and other printers who have retired or passed away. They live on in the Depot.

 So our goal is to raise the needed funds to get the living letterpress museum opened in this rehabilitated railroad depot. Then we can welcome you all in for workshops, demonstrations, exhibits and events. Help bring the building alive so our living letterpress museum can truly come alive!

We have $50,000  to go to provide the $83,000 needed for our State Historical Fund grant. Then another $217,000 to help us get complete rehab done! Every dollar helps. And special gifts help especially! Colorado Gives goes through December 10. Let’s see how much we can raise by then!

Intertype used at the Denver Post back in the day! Press pictures by Bryan Dahlberg

Any questions or thoughts on where we might seek more funding, call/text 720-480-5358 or email info@letterpressdepot.org. THANK YOU!

Busy May (but wait, how is it almost over?)

An unwelcome surprise this year was the discovery that the Depot’s main structural beam and other supports had rotted. But this month, temporary vertical supports to hold up the roof were erected, the old vertical and horizontal beams replaced and the temporary ones removed. All part of the rehabilitation funded by the State Historical Fund and donors like you.

We also did more printing with elementary school kids - at Bishop, Cherrelyn and, below, at Charles Hay World School.

Board members Kirk Benson and Dave Laskowski II. Kirk also is an arts specialist in Englewood schools.

Then it was time for the Rocky Mountain Stamp Show at the Arapahoe County Fairgrounds. Some samples of what we printed: Board member Marc Silberman designed the vegetable laden-tribute to Colorado agriculture for the event and Executive Director Tom Parson had fun printing various cuts.

Also some great railroad finds at the next door ephemera show!

Volunteers always welcome! Englewooddepot@gmail.com or call 720-480-5358.

Only one thing was missing

9800 feet on a cool day with the smell of sage pungent in the air. This past weekend, board members Tom Parson, Marc Silberman and Patti Parson were at Como Roundhouse, the last remaining stone narrow gauge roundhouse in Colorado, to print on a 12x15 C&P Gordon Old Style press and talk Depot talk.  We bonded over printing and railroads and vintage equipment with hundreds of people from the mountain communities, from Denver, from Wisconsin and Minnesota. And then there were two young women who had biked from Banff, and stopped on their way to the Mexico border!  Besides the C&P, there was a non-working Miehle Pony press used to print the Fairplay Flume. One last page still set up on a chase -  an announcement about burro races, with the band Zephy and appearances by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. What a frozen moment in time!

Oh  and the thing that was missing? A way to power the C&P.  No motor…that was ok. But no treadle either. All depended on an inexhaustible left arm on the flywheel, which Tom supplied.