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Regis University

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1888, W. 50th Ave. Pkwy. to 53rd Ave. between Lowell Blvd. and Irving St.

Founded in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 1877 as the College of the Sacred Heart, this Jesuit school moved to its 40-acre north Denver site in 1887. Edward Barry, a scholastic trained in architecture, worked with Denver architects Henry Dozier and Alexander Cazin on Old Main (1888), a three-story tan and red sandstone and rhyolite hall with a mansard roof. Renamed Regis in 1921 to honor a seventeenth-century French Jesuit, the college grew slowly despite impressive grounds arranged around the typical tree-lined quadrangle lawn. Carroll Hall (1923) was the only other distinguished building until the 1950s. Since then this university of about 5,000 students has thrived, and the campus has filled with newer buildings. On the campus one of the most impressive new structures is the Coors Life Directions Center (1987), 3539 W. 50th Avenue, whose parapeted gable ends and steep-pitched roofs allude to the Collegiate Gothic style of Carroll Hall. Saco R. DeBoer provided a 1923 master plan that has been partially implemented but abandoned on the eastern edge of the campus along Federal Boulevard, where a commercial strip prevails.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Thomas J. Noel
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Citation

Thomas J. Noel, "Regis University", [Denver, Colorado], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/CO-01-DV183.

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