Italian architect Gio Ponti completed this seven-story tower, the original Denver Art Museum, in 1971, and you are looking at one of the most distinctive buildings in the American West. Ponti, then in his eighties, created a building unlike anything else in Denver: a seven-story tower clad in more than a million gray glass tiles that catch light differently at every hour of the day. The faceted exterior and narrow, irregular windows were designed to create a building that looked like a medieval fortress or a giant piece of sculpture.
The building's profile became Denver's most recognizable piece of architecture for three decades. The museum's collection is particularly strong in Native American and pre-Columbian art — holdings that reflect Colorado's position at the edge of territory that was home to dozens of Indigenous nations before European settlement and that rank among the most significant such collections in the country. The original Ponti building has been connected since 2006 to the Frederic C. Hamilton building next door, designed by Daniel Libeskind, continuing the tradition of using dramatic architecture to announce the presence of art in the civic landscape.