Mile High Center

The Mile High Center was commissioned by the developer Webb & Knapp. Planning began in 1952 and construction in 1953, and the complex was finished in 1956. I. M. Pei was its design principal; his firm handled urban planning, architecture and the interior design of the public spaces, alongside two associate firms, Kahn and Jacobs of New York and G. Meredith Musick of Denver. The complex won an Award of Merit from the American Institute of Architects in 1959, then the AIA Denver Chapter's 25 Year Award in 1995.

Across Lincoln Street, Philip Johnson later designed the so-called Cash Register tower (1983). He joined it to Pei's tower with a footbridge and attached a glass atrium to Pei's building; in the 1980s it did away with the original plaza and pavilion and hid much of the tower.

The complex occupies a 2.7-acre corner lot (about 1.1 ha). The buildings stood back from the street within a plaza planted with trees and furnished with seating, fountains and long, shallow pools that were first chilled and stocked with Colorado trout. A courtyard stepped down the sloping site beside a waterfall that dropped into a pool.

The 23-storey tower rises as a pure geometric form; it takes its cue from Mies van der Rohe's clean, rectilinear lines. Its deep floor plates, 127 by 152 feet (about 39 by 46 m), are served by an air-handling system that conditions both the outer and inner zones; it shows on the facade, where white enamel panels weave like a tapestry through the dark aluminium bands that clad the frame. At ground level, instead of the shops usually fitted into an investment building, an open arcade let people stroll and take in the landscape.

The wide-span exhibition pavilion was the tower's counterpoint, with shops and restaurants on its lower level. Up the slope at the Lincoln Street end, it was low, glass-walled and roofed with a parabolic arch of stainless steel. A remodelled four-storey bank building, facing the plaza, completed the group.

The tower stands at the corner of 17th Street and Broadway in downtown Denver. The original plaza and pavilion no longer exist.