| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Colorado State Capitol: History, Politics, Preservation. By Derek R. Everett. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2005. xiii + 244 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, appendices, index. $29.95.)

In 1868, Henry C. Brown, an opportunistic Denver real estate profiteer, donated ten barren acres on the edge of town as the site for Colorado's first real capitol building. Brown was not altruistic; Brown's Bluff, as the hill was called, adjoined his planned high-end residential development. When, after eleven years, not a spadeful of dirt had been turned for the capitol, the tenacious Brown went all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court—twice—to get his land back. He was rebuffed, and construction on the million-dollar job finally commenced in 1886. Then followed additional years of indecision, bickering, incompetence, shenanigans, delays, and general chaos. By the time the capitol was completed in 1900 (at 170 percent over the initial spending cap) the building—a difficult-to-maintain hodgepodge of dirt-collecting nooks and crannies, grumblers said—was instantly too small. The lovable old box of rocks provokes controversy even today. The latest quibbling, as related here by Everett, concerns whether Colorado's aging yet "most important building" deserves a mere nip and tuck or an extreme makeover (p. 185).

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