Colorado history

Friday, September 4, 2026

A marble bank opens on Denver's Wall Street of the Rockies, September tries on a 97-degree suit, and a Denver cellist answers a Craigslist ad that turns into Ho Hey.

Colorado National Bank opens the temple on 17th and Champa

1915 · 17th and Champa Streets, Denver

On Sept. 4, 1915, Colorado National Bank opened its new headquarters at 918 17th Street. Fisher & Fisher wrapped a steel frame in Colorado Yule marble and called the result what the bank's slogan already promised: a bank that looks like a bank.

Seventeenth Street had already nicknamed itself the Wall Street of the Rockies. Colorado National Bank, founded by the Kountze brothers in the gold-rush years and run for decades by the intermarried Kountze and Berger families, decided the street needed a Greek temple to match the brag.

William E. and Arthur A. Fisher designed it. White Yule marble, fluted columns, bronze grilles, a vault door that weighed more than a small locomotive. The bronze vault and door clocked in around 73,000 pounds. Inside, the doors alone were 62,000. If you were going to park Wall Street money in Denver, the Fishers wanted you to feel it in your knees.

The building later grew the way banks grow: a seamless 1920s addition by Merrill and Burnham Hoyt, Allen Tupper True's Indian Memories murals wrapping the lobby in the mid-1920s, extra floors in the 1960s that did not pretend to be a temple. US Bank left in 2007. Stonebridge spent $48 million turning the marble box into the Renaissance Denver Downtown City Center Hotel, which opened in 2014 with the vaults still doing security theater as meeting rooms and True's murals still watching the check-in line.

The slogan aged better than most banking slogans. It still looks like a bank. It just pours you a cocktail first.

Sources: Wikipedia — Timeline of Denver (opens Sept. 4, 1915) · Colorado Encyclopedia — Colorado National Bank · Wikipedia — Colorado National Bank Building · SAH Archipedia — Colorado National Bank

Denver ties the all-time September high at 97

1995 · Denver

Sept. 4, 1995, Denver hit 97 degrees — tying the all-time September record first set on Sept. 5, 1899, and matched on this same date in 1960. The first five days of that 1995 September all reached the 90s. The low that night was 64, which tied the record high minimum for the date.

Colorado September has a reputation as the month that apologizes for July. Some years it forgets.

On Sept. 4, 1995, the official thermometer reached 97 degrees, matching the hottest September reading Denver had ever posted. The club was small and rude: Sept. 5, 1899; Sept. 4, 1960; Sept. 1, 1995; and this afternoon. The first five days of the month all climbed into the 90s. Somewhere in that same hot 1995 stretch, a dry microburst at the old Stapleton site gusted to 85 mph with almost no rain — heat with a slamming door.

The date has a split personality. In 1960 it was 97. The next year, after Denver's earliest snow on Sept. 3, 1961, this morning woke up at 39 degrees, the coldest Sept. 4 on the books, with a high of only 52. Same square on the calendar. Opposite weather systems, same city, one year apart.

Later Septembers have run hotter still at the airport. Early September 2019 put 98s on the books at DIA — a different official site than the old city record, same message. Pack the linen shirt. Keep the fleece in the trunk. Denver will pick one and not warn you which.

Sources: ThorntonWeather — NWS week of Sept. 4 notes · Extreme Weather Watch — Denver Sept. 4 records · ThorntonWeather — Aug. 30 to Sept. 5 recap

Neyla Pekarek is born in Denver, then finds the Lumineers on Craigslist

1986 · Denver / Aurora

Cellist and singer Neyla Pekarek was born Sept. 4, 1986, and raised on the Denver side of the metro. In 2010 she answered a Craigslist ad from Wesley Schultz and Jeremiah Fraites. The trio became the Lumineers. Ho Hey did the rest.

The origin story is almost too on-brand for this town. A classically trained cellist from Aurora finishes a music-education degree at UNC in Greeley, moves back in with her parents, and answers a want ad because she needs something to do until a real job appears.

Schultz and Fraites needed a cello. Pekarek showed up. They rehearsed in Denver, played the rooms that still smell like last night's IPA, then took a 30-day tour because she was 23 and, as she later put it, if you are going to do something stupid in a band you might as well do it then. The self-titled album and the stomps-and-claps single Ho Hey turned a Denver folk-rock project into a stadium problem.

She left the band in 2018 to write her own songs. The solo record Rattlesnake became a DCPA musical, Rattlesnake Kate, about the Colorado ranch woman who killed a rattler with a gun, a No. 2 shovel, and no patience. Pekarek wrote the score and played the horse. That sentence is true and we are leaving it there.

Birthday math: a Denver kid, a cello, a classified ad, a chorus the whole state can still clap on the two and four. Not a bad haul for September 4.

Sources: Wikipedia — Neyla Pekarek · Denver Center — Neyla Pekarek bio · Wikipedia — The Lumineers