SUGAR BUILDING History

1530 16TH STREET Architectural style: SULLIVANESQUE ORNAMENTATION Built: 1906; TWO-STORY ADDITION 1912 Architects: AARON GOVE ANDTHOMAS F. WALSH Cost: $100,000 (FOUR STORIES); $40,000 (TWO-STORY ADDITION) The Sugar Building was constructed in 1906 to house the administrative offices of the newly incorporated Great Western Sugar Company on the site of the former Red Lion Hotel. A fourstory warehouse was also constructed facing Wazee. The company was formed through the merger of six small independent sugar beet factories in Loveland, Eaton, Greeley, Windsor, Fort Collins, and Longmont. It grew quickly, adding new plants in Sterling, Fort Morgan, Brush, and Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, within the next four years. This growth prompted the need for expansion of the administrative offices, and a two-story addition was built in 1912. Two additional stories were added to the warehouse in 1916. By 1920, Great Western had purchased a plant in Billings, Montana, and constructed new facilities in Gering, Bayard, and Mitchell, Nebraska; Lovell, Wyoming; and Brighton, Colorado. The conversion of the warehouse into additional office space met the burgeoning needs of the company that same year. The Sugar Building is functional in design and reminiscent of Louis Sullivan’s work in its arrangement of windows between vertical piers and in the use of terra-cotta decoration based on geometric and stylized foliage forms. Inside the main doors you can see the brass open-cage Otis elevator, said to be the oldest working system of its kind west of the Mississippi.