All aboard! Last year, your donations to the Letterpress Depot helped us get heat for our historic 1915 Depot building. Thank you! Now we're going BIG. We want to raise the almost $300,000 more needed to finish construction and open our doors, so we can welcome you and the entire community to come print and learn in a living museum. Your donation is an investment in the preservation of our iconic building, the future of letterpress printing and book arts and continued community involvement. We have the strong support of the State Historical Fund and the City of Englewood. Now we need you!
1,500 people have agreed to be on our Mail Chimp email list and over 3,600 follow us on social media. In addition to support letters from the Englewood City Council and City Manager for our successful State Historic Fund grant application, we have had many expressions of encouragement and enthusiasm, including:
Sky Shipley, Skyline Press: "This was a gargantuan undertaking... The Depot is at the very core of what we all need to do to preserve and perpetuate the letterpress craft. It is a pleasure and an honor to contribute to this cause."
Christiane Citron, Esq. "The plan to develop this historic structure into a living museum of letterpress arts, with hands-on opportunities for discovering the nitty gritty of book arts, seems a match made in heaven for this property."
Erin Rademacher, Art Educator: “With successful funding, the Depot can open as a safe and engaging community space available for students after school and offer countless opportunities to give a voice to our younger generation, while fostering a sense of pride in their local community and interacting with an active museum that happens to be a Colorado State Register of Historic Property.”
Bruce Nall, Railroad Historian & Artist: "As one of the few remaining “Mission Style” Santa Fe depots, the Englewood Santa Fe depot is worth maintaining, restoring, and upgrading as necessary as a a nod to both transportation history but also identity within the community. Continuing rehabilitation of the depot, currently on the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties, and making it available for community events and groups will expose the public to what was originally the railroad’s defining architectural image of the Southwest."
Michael Keyes, woodcut printmaker/artist: "Much is needed to make the building safe and suitable for museum use. ADA access work, and carpentry and plaster work are needed. I am imagining the time when the work is completed, and the museum can welcome guests and enthusiasts of all ages to the Letterpress Depot, a historic building, with wonderful letterpress and railroad memorabilia and experiences! Such a valuable asset to educate and entertain members of the community."
Christi Beckmann, CSU printing student: "Although this museum is not yet open to the public, the organization is very active in the community with regular scheduled demonstrations and events to preserve this printing tradition. People in our Colorado communities as well as out of state visitors want to learn more about this fascinating print method. Continuing the rehabilitation of the Depot is an urgent need since their building cannot yet host the indoor events and classes as well as function as a museum. Opening the doors of this wonderful museum would allow the Letterpress Depot to operate as a student educational resource and function as a teaching/learning community gathering place. Currently there is a revival in interest of the letterpress arts and people are craving more hands on experience and learning."
Teresa Sponaugle, Grain Bin Press, Greeley: "The Englewood Depot has a unique opportunity to marry two historic forces that were both formative to our region: railway transportation and printing press communication. These iron icons helped build the American West when they took up residence in Colorado, developing news routes along the Front Range and into the Mountain West. But the beautiful building requires significant repair and upgrades before opening for public use. These visionaries have been generous with their knowledge and skill even before the Depot opens, mentoring and advising new printers like me and others interested in printing history. While Englewood is home for the Depot, its reach is already far beyond that community. There is nothing else like it in the state."
The Englewood Depot's mission is to give hands-on access to traditional letterpress equipment and other forms of book arts to allow the community to learn about, preserve, reimagine and redefine this beautiful art form for future generations. We aim to print with and for a diversity of voices, to reach out to those whose communities may have been marginalized, under-resourced or underserved. To accomplish these purposes, we will also rehabilitate and preserve the historic Englewood Depot building which has its own stories to tell.
We cannot wait for the day when we can welcome the community into our iconic home – the 1915 Englewood Railroad Depot – where people of all ages can learn to print, and witness firsthand not only the history of printing, but also of railroading in the west. But to get to that point, we still need to raise almost $300,000 toward the $550,000 needed to finish rehabilitating the building.
Once open to the public, the Letterpress Depot will be a living museum of letterpress printing, book arts and design – a community resource and vintage print shop with space for exhibits, demonstrations, workshops, events and meetings.
Since master printer Tom Parson bought the building and then donated it to the Letterpress Depot nonprofit, much has been done. Donors like you helped us recently install a heat pump system and electricity. And thanks to past donations and supporters like the State Historical Fund and the Gates Family Foundation, we stabilized and painted the exterior, replaced rotted structural beams and framing that threatened the interior, put up a missing foundation wall, laid walkways and a concrete ramp and started rehabilitation of the old waiting room, office and passageway.
We are proud to be preserving one of the two remaining Mission Style Santa Fe depots in the country, which is so important that it is on the State Register of Historic Places. But we also love to print! So we regularly take our presses to parks and schools, fairs and markets, to give people the chance to feel the joy of putting ink to paper.
But with a home we can do so much more. If you want to do workshops, if you want your kids to do field trips, if you want to see a collection that celebrates the people and machines that powered journalism, job and hobby printing in the West, please donate so we can get the building in shape to be open to the public.
The Depot building is a work in progress, but our love of letterpress printing and book arts is a daily joy, which we will share with the community every chance we get.
Organization name
Letterpress Depot
other names
Englewood Depot
2013
Tax id (EIN)
46-3207079
Category
Arts, Culture & Humanities
Organization Size
Small Organization
Address
3098 South Galapago St.Mailing
PO Box 798Arapahoe County, CO, US
Denver, CO, US