A Stay at the

Station
Exploring Denvers
railroad palace

Union Station offers more than a dozen restaurants and shops, a new hotel and a revamped
transit center giving visitors plenty to experience without having to leave the premises.
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A STAY AT THE STATION 11

Denvers old train station took on a new life when the Crawford Hotel opened last year. Using the hotel as a base camp, people can explore Denver,
or simply explore Union Stations shops and restaurants and perhaps enjoy a cocktail from bartender Hunter Byrne at the Cooper Lounge.

story by HEIDI KERR-SCHLAEFER

t was Friday night in Denver, and my husband, Ryan, and I

had big plans: We were going to spend the entire weekend inside
an old train station.
Under normal circumstances, spending the weekend at a train
station means your travel plans have gone seriously awry. But this
wasnt any train station it was Union Station. The 120-year-old
Denver landmark just got a $58-million renovation, complete
with new shops, restaurants and a fancy hotel. We wanted to
know if the revamped Union Station offered enough to keep us
content and entertained for two days without leaving the premises. Wed soon find out.
We arrived by rail, the same way millions of travelers have
arrived at Union Station since 1894, except we took the light rail
rather than a steam locomotive. We stepped off the train, and after

12 COLORADO LIFE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

photographs by JOSHUA HARDIN

a quick underground walk, an escalator deposited us at the stations back door. Above Union Stations big double doors, a sign
caught my eye: The Crawford Hotel. This new hotel was to be our
home for the next two nights.
We had been to this station a handful of times before, and I
happily noted as we crossed the threshold that it looked the same
only better and busier. The station was filled with people, some
pulling luggage and others clutching fancy handbags or pushing
baby strollers.
Our fourth-floor hotel room combined Victorian charm
complete with claw-foot tub with modern dcor. After oohing and aahing over our room for a while, Ryan and I set out
to explore the new Union Station. Just outside our room we
stopped at the balcony to gaze down on the Great Hall. I fought

the urge to start singing Dont Cry for Me Argentina.

We decided to investigate all the nooks and crannies of the station to plan out our weekend. Our first official stop was the Cooper Lounge. Like the view from outside our room, it is located
above the fray of the Great Hall
and is a mid-century haven where
pearled patrons sip fancy drinks.
Since this is Denver, there also
were a few folks in jeans.
We settled into high wingback
chairs and perused the menu.
While the scene had a glamorous,
1960s feel, like something out of
Mad Men, the electronic tablet on
which I read the drink specialties
felt more like a Jetsons cartoon.
This was my first digital menu
experience, and I was in a trance,
flipping through the options on
the brightly colored screen.
We ordered expensive drinks, and they arrived on a silver
platter with a side of nuts in a small, silver cup. For some reason the price of our drinks wasnt as vexing now that they had
been served in this manner. A couple of days of this treatment
and Id be loath to go back to a perspiring pint glass on a cardboard coaster.
To top off an already fancy cocktail hour, we ordered oysters
from the raw bar on wheels provided by Stoic & Genuine, the

seafood restaurant downstairs. Biting into a sweet and salty oyster from the Pacific Northwest, my childhood home, I was transported to a rocky beach where the cries of seagulls perforate the
gray misty air. Who says you cant taste the ocean in Colorado?
We continued our opulent evening of seafood at Stoic & Genuine, where a giant, pink octopus
artistically climbed along the
outer wall. We dined on crab and
bacon-wrapped halibut followed
by a peanut butter dessert.
Back inside the Great Hall, heels
clicked on stone floors as gangs of
young ladies in stylish short skirts
held on to each other, giggling
from a fun-filled Friday night
and one-too-many cocktails. We
wanted to grab a drink at Terminal Bar, where patrons can order
from a pass-through window or
elbow their way inside the dark, wood-paneled pub, but it was
too crowded. We saved it for another day and retired to our room.

We set out to explore the new

Union Station. Just outside our
room we stopped at the balcony
to gaze down on the Great Hall. I
fought the urge to start singing
Dont Cry for me Argentina.

Day two, and we were up early watching the sun illuminate the

city. Brick and steel turned a lovely shade of pink before the scene
became blindingly crisp, as if someone had turned the sharpen
colors knob to the highest setting.
The elevator doors opened to a quiet Great Hall, but as we
A STAY AT THE STATION 13

walked towards Snooze, a breakfast restaurant, the squeals of

children greeted us.
After breakfast we crossed the hall to the new Tattered Cover,
a smaller version of the independent bookstore. With a delightful literary selection, seemingly handpicked for this location,
the collection included a large bookshelf titled Trains in
Fact & Fiction. I selected a travel book, and Ryan purchased
a newspaper. The iPad in our hotel room had a selection of
newspapers available, but my husbands preferred newspaperreading experience includes the smell of ink and black smudges
on his fingers.
Back in the Great Hall we sank into a low, comfortable green
sectional. I settled in to read, but I was distracted by the smack
of a puck hitting the backboard of the table shuffleboard set up
in the middle of the hall. Laughter from the game drifted over
us. Families walked by in packs. A gathering of train enthusiasts
toured the station like a band of excited school children, except
with white beards, floppy hats and film-loaded cameras.

Somewhere behind me a woman was telling the story of riding

the train alone from Denver to St. Louis in 1963 when she was just
14 years old. I missed the end of the story because a weary man in
a rumpled suit with a loosened tie slumped onto the couch next to
us, his luggage in a heap at his feet. A scene from Death of a Salesman flickered briefly in my head. Eventually we wandered off to
find lunch, stopping briefly to browse a few shops along the way.
After a cheese plate for two on the patio at Mercantile Dining
and Provisions, we headed back to our room. I longed to soak in
the claw-foot tub, and Ryan wanted a nap two midday luxuries
we never indulge in at home.
By now it was Saturday night, and the station was abuzz. Wed
finally made it to Terminal Bar for drinks. The Amtrak train from
Chicago was delayed, and the Great Hall was full of passengers
on pause.
It occurred to me that staying at The Crawford is akin to being
a boulder in a flowing river as travelers spin by like twigs borne
by the water, occasionally getting caught in an eddy before the

The Terminal Bar is abuzz on Saturday evening, populated by a mix of locals enjoying a night on the town and passengers from Amtrak trains.

Union Station has stood in lower downtown Denver since 1894,

the year the original Union Station, built in 1881, burned down.

current pulls them onward.

The night swirled around us happy voices, twinkling lights, the
din of a city evening. If you squinted your eyes and looked around,
it could have been 2015 or 1915, and I grew wistful for a time when
life moved at the pace of a train instead of a commercial jetliner.
The next morning I awoke to the smell of coffee creeping into
our room like a ghost. Ryan was still asleep, so I left our room to
follow the aroma to its source.
By now it was 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, and music played over the
speakers in the Great Hall, but there was no one around to hear it
except for me, a security guard fiddling with a lamp and a beagle
ardently guarding a backpack at the feet of his sleeping master. I
shuffled across the vacant hall toward a cafe, and I wondered how
the old ghosts of Union Station are getting on with the new ghosts.
Our self-appointed mission was nearly complete, and in this place
of constant motion, this place of travel, of coming and going, weve
managed to find stillness. During our stay, time ceased to exist, and I
silently wished that we could remain motionless in this current, forever trapped in a moment long ago, but not quite past.
14 COLORADO LIFE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

The Rock
of LoDo
Lower Downtown Denver has seen incredible
change over the past century, but throughout it all,
Union Station has remained one of the few constants. The stations first incarnation, Union Depot,
opened here in 1881, serving as a hub for all passenger rail traffic to the city. That station burned down
in 1894, but the current Union Station was built on
the same site by the end of that year. Before the era
of commercial airlines, it was the gateway to Denver, and as late as 1958, more passengers arrived at
Union Station than at the citys main airport. The
renovations completed last year have restored some
of Union Stations past glory.

Both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt

arrived at Union Station when visiting
Denver. While the facade has changed
little since they saw it, the train platform
is new, making its debut last year.

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A STAY AT THE STATION 17