The Gallup-Stanbury Building: Frontier Art and Bar Tabs

The Gallup-Stanbury Building stands at 1426 Larimer Street in Denver, inside the Larimer Square Historic District. The SAH Archipedia record gives 1873 as its year of construction and a dry goods and hardware store as its original use. The Denver's Oldest Landmarks guide names William Gallup and Frederick Stanbury as its original owners. Its founders, first use and construction year are all stated in the sources, which makes the building a strong subject for a dated walk. That combination makes it worth a stop for anyone who wants a documented early commercial building on Larimer Street, and every fact below can be checked against the source it cites.

Start at 1426 Larimer Street and walk the block with that number in hand. The SAH Archipedia record gives 1426 Larimer Street as the building's address, which makes the number the most direct way to find it. The record is titled for the Gallup-Stanbury Building, so a reader who searches by that name reaches the same entry the address leads to. The address is the fixed point on the street, and each later section on this page ties back to it. The building is part of the Larimer Square Historic District, which the district section below covers in full.

Two founders and one first business define the building's opening chapter. The Denver's Oldest Landmarks guide lists William Gallup and Frederick Stanbury as the original owners. The SAH Archipedia record gives the original use as a dry goods and hardware store. Read together, the two sources tie the owners to the business they ran from the start. Neither source repeats the other: one supplies the names and the other supplies the trade, so the building's first chapter is complete only when both are read. A reader can use the names to search further, and the store to picture what the building was for.

The Denver's Oldest Landmarks guide describes the Gallup-Stanbury Building as a pioneer of party-wall construction in Denver. A party wall is a wall shared by two neighboring buildings, so one wall serves both structures. The guide's word is pioneer, and this page keeps that wording rather than adding a date or a comparison. Because the guide uses that single term, the page presents the building as an early example of the method and nothing more. For a reader interested in how early Denver buildings were joined to their neighbors, the building offers a specific example to examine on Larimer Street.

The building sits inside the Larimer Square Historic District, which the Denver's Oldest Landmarks guide says was established in 1971. The Auraria Library Digital Collection records that the district pioneered adaptive reuse in Colorado and that it contains the Gallup-Stanbury Building. Adaptive reuse means keeping an older building in service by giving it a new working use. For a reader walking Larimer Street, the practical point is that an 1873 store sits within a district established in 1971, so the building's first use and the district's later history can be read along the same stretch of street. That reading is the strongest reason to plan the stop, because the building's founding and the district's designation are both recorded in sources listed on this page.

Updated 2026-10-11: removed unsourced dates, prices and saloon passages; dropped the landmark number; cited each kept fact.