5 buildings worth visiting at SMPS SWRC in Denver

I’m heading to Denver for the 2026 Southwest Regional Conference of the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) from September 16-18. This is OpenAsset’s second year as an SMPS Strategic Partner+, and I’m excited to talk to the firms and industry experts that attend!

However, from my experience going to many events like these, its easy to get so distracted talking shop that you forget to take some time to explore the city you’re in. For people in our industry, that means appreciating the local architecture. So, I’ve created this list of some of the most impressive architectural feats Denver has to offer for my fellow SMPS attendees to admire in between browsing panels and booths.

If you’re staying at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel on Court Place, here are some of the best buildings within easy traveling distance. Three of the five are walkable from the Sheraton, while two others require a rideshare or a bus ride. 

One practical note: the FreeRide shuttle runs along 16th Street between Union Station and Civic Center Station, so make sure to take advantage of that!

1. Denver Art Museum

100 W 14th Ave Pkwy (~10-minute walk)

The Denver Art Museum has three architectural features on one campus.

The Martin Building opened in 1971 to a design by Italian architect Gio Ponti with James Sudler Associates, and it is still the only completed Ponti project in the United States.

The Frederic C. Hamilton Building followed in 2006: 146,000 square feet of sharply angled, interlocking forms designed by Daniel Libeskind.

In 2021 the campus reopened after a full renovation of the Ponti building, led by Machado Silvetti with Denver-based Fentress Architects and timed to its 50th anniversary, along with the new Sie Welcome Center.

How did they make a 50-year-old landmark work as a modern museum?  That’s something I’ve been wondering too!

If you only have an hour, this and the Capitol pair well because they sit a few minutes apart.

User: Stilfehler at wikivoyage shared, CC BY-SA 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0, via Wikimedia Commons

2. Colorado State Capitol

200 E Colfax Ave (~10-minute walk)

Architect Elijah E. Myers won the design competition and construction began in 1886, though Myers was dismissed in 1889 in a dispute over cost and never saw the building finished. It opened in November 1894 and what he left echoes the US Capitol in Washington.

The dome everyone photographs is copper panels gilded with gold leaf from a Colorado mine, first applied in 1908 to mark the state’s gold rush.

Inside, the chamber wainscoting is Colorado Rose Onyx, a rose marble quarried near Beulah. The Capitol is believed to hold the entire known supply, and there is no more of that stone anywhere. Allen True’s water murals are inside too.

Out on the west steps you can stand a mile above sea level, though there’s a long-running disagreement about exactly where. The 15th step carries the engraving, a 1969 student re-survey marked the 18th step, and a 2003 measurement settled on the 13th step. All three are marked.

The Capitol runs free public tours on weekdays, on the hour from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. They’re capped at 30 people on a first-come basis, so go early if your afternoon is tight.

Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

3. Daniels & Fisher Tower

1601 Arapahoe St (~14-minute walk)

Architect Frederick Sterner designed the Daniels & Fisher Tower in 1910 as the campanile of the department store below it, modeled on St. Mark’s bell tower in Venice.

The Venetian original had collapsed in 1902 and was being rebuilt at the time, so the reference was current news, not a nod to antiquity.

Sterner built his version a few feet taller than Venice’s, which prompted the Denver Times to joke that Venice was building a smaller copy of Denver’s tower.

At 325 feet it was the tallest structure between the Mississippi and California when it opened.

While the store is long gone, the tower survived and made the National Register of Historic Places in 1969. It still stands on 16th Street with clock faces on four sides and a 5,500-pound bell from 1911 up top. It’s a private event venue now, so this one is a look-up-from-the-street stop.

Natkarch2, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

4. Denver Union Station

1701 Wynkoop St (~25-minute walk or a few stops on the FreeRide)

Fire destroyed the central block of Denver’s original Union Station in 1894, the same year the Capitol opened.

Architects Aaron Gove and Thomas Walsh designed the replacement, completed in 1914 in carved granite with a wrought iron and glass canopy. That Beaux-Arts center section is what you walk into today.

The 2014 restoration was led by two Denver firms, Tryba Architects and JG Johnson Architects. They brought back the Great Hall’s chandeliers and marble floors, and threaded the 112-room Crawford Hotel and its shops and restaurants through the building.

Separately, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) turned about 20 acres of rail yard behind the station into a transit district serving light rail, commuter rail, Amtrak, buses, bikes, and pedestrians. The 980-foot bus concourse runs underground, with street-level pavilions dropping you into it.

The Great Hall is open to anyone who walks in. The chandeliers and marble floors are worth five minutes even if you don’t stay for a drink.

Darkshark0159 at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

5. Denver Botanic Gardens

1007 York St (~2.4 miles away, so this one is a rideshare or a bus rather than a walk)

Architects Victor Hornbein and Edward White Jr. finished the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory in 1966 and it still looks like something from the future.

High interlaced concrete arches hold faceted Plexiglas panels over 11,000 square feet of tropical planting, including a two-story banyan tree that was fabricated rather than grown.

The panels are sloped so condensation runs down the structure instead of raining on the people underneath.

The Freyer-Newman Center, by Denver firm Davis Partnership Architects, added exhibition, teaching, and research space, including galleries, art studios, a rare books library, and conservation labs.

Admission is ticketed at $16.25 for adults, so buy ahead. Check the day you’re going, too: the Gardens stay open until 7 p.m. most days but close at 4 p.m. on Fridays.

I, Laurascudder, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

See you in Denver!

There are so many great cities I’ve gotten to explore while doing events for OpenAsset, and Denver is no exception. I spend a lot of time talking to architecture, engineering, and construction firms about how they can use our digital asset management and AI proposal platform to win bids, so it’s nice to see what AEC firms can build in the real world once those bids are won.

I hope you make some extra time in your schedule to see some of these architectural features while you’re in town. I’ll be at our booth if you want to talk about them, or learn how your firm can use our platform to build projects like these.

And if you can’t make it to this event, you can always book a demo to learn more, or follow us on linkedin to see what city we’ll be at next.

Enjoy Denver! It’s a great walking city.