201 E. 45th Avenue

By Mary Lou Egan

Any building constructed in 1886, like the one at 201 E. 45^th Avenue in Globeville, has witnessed a lot of history. The structure was once home to the Globeville Market & Supply Store, one of two company stores for the Globe Smelter. The other store was on Washington Street. 

Employees of the smelter and their families could order meat, dairy, produce and housewares (which would be delivered, and pay their bills at the end of the month. They could also cash their paychecks at the market. 

In 1919, the Globe Smelter discontinued smelting and transitioned to recovering what was valuable from ores shipped from other plants. With a workforce of only 100 men, the company no longer needed its own stores and sold the one on 45^th Avenue to Henry J. Vogel. Vogel’s ownership of the mercantile would be brief and traumatic. 

The headline from the April 2, 1920, edition of the Denver Post screamed, “Clever Yeggs Crack Safe, Make Big Globeville Haul.” 

The robbers didn’t just crack the safe, they blew it apart. Police believed the men were experts, using just enough nitroglycerin to destroy the safe and demolish the front window without waking any of the neighbors. The thieves made off with $1,000 in cash, a Liberty bond and silver. They also took shoes, overalls and other merchandise valued at between $500 and $1,000. Men heading to work at the nearby stockyards on Friday morning alerted Vogel, who began tallying up the losses.

“The robbers must have been familiar with our business and knew we cashed many checks from the stockyards on payday, which was yesterday,” Vogel said. “I am thankful that I took a bunch of endorsed checks home with me, or the loot would have been much larger.”

After the robbery, and in light of the fragile health of his wife, Vogel sold the store to Carl Gerhardt and moved to Longmont. 

Carl Gerhardt emigrated from Warenburg, a Russian village on the east side of the Volga River. When he arrived in Denver, he got a job with the Burke, Donaldson & Taylors Produce Company in downtown Denver, where he gained some retail experience and learned to speak English. He purchased the market from Vogel in 1920. Daughters Lydia and Pauline remember working in the store.

Pauline recalled, “Everybody didn’t have a refrigerator those days, so we made up a lot of orders every day and they would be delivered by noon. Then on payday, people would come in and pay their tab. Andy Jackson and Joe Faber made our German sausage in these great big tubs, and in the back of our yard was a smokehouse where the sausage was smoked.”

Lydia recalled, “Candy used to come in a great big wooden bucket, about 25 pounds. And it was good candy. Every Christmas, my dad used to get every church, the Lutheran church, the Orthodox church, the Congregational church, and the Catholic church a bucket of candy. And oranges, at Christmastime we’d get crates of oranges, and sometimes the only thing some children got for Christmas was that orange.

Lydia smiled, “Being in the grocery business, we got to know everyone and we got invited to every single wedding.”