All aboard! Your donations this year will help the Letterpress Depot get heat for our historic 1915 Depot building so that we can print with more people in the community, and so we can bring traditional printing – and an iconic building – back to life. Your donations have gotten us this far: Help us take the next warm step forward! Come along for the ride as we celebrate the past while creating a new future.
1,500 people have agreed to be on our Mail Chimp email list and many hundreds more follow us on social media. We have had many expressions of support and enthusiasm, including:
Peter Bergman, Assoc Prof. MSU: "The Letterpress Depot has potential to become a national attraction in the world of artisan printing and printmaking – both in a contemporary context and through its historic preservation initiatives. The organization has also proudly embraced the restoration and preservation of the historic Englewood train depot building as central to its mission."
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."
Leon Loughridge, artist: "I have been in the printing world since the 1960’s and have watched an industry change drastically from manual to digital production. My artistry is based on that manual production and so I greatly value that the Englewood Depot is preserving the equipment and tools of this manual art form. The facility, when complete, will become an asset to the Englewood and Denver arts communities as it will offer equipment that has been lost to the changing world. It will also become an invaluable educational tool for schools of all levels. I personally will welcome the opening of the Depot as a resource to continue printing my hand-printed books that I sell to library collections, museums and private collectors."
Alissandra Seelaus, Cherry Creek High School Teacher: "The Letterpress Depot has volunteered their time, resources, energy, and attention to share the letterpress process and its history with our students on numerous occasions. They have attended a semi-annual event we host called Fine Arts Friday for two years…The Letterpress Depot is always a highlight of this flagship event, and our students are eager to bring them back to campus at any/all opportunities. They happily oblige with enthusiasm for the subject and compassion for all our students and their families."
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.
For the Letterpress Depot, printing is all about community, a chance to share thoughts, words, images and designs in a traditional and beautiful artform. This past year, we have taken our presses and printers to parks and schools, fairs, conventions, and markets to give people the chance to feel the joy of ink on paper. Our goal is to make our home in the Englewood Depot into a living, working museum, where anyone in the community of any age can come learn to print and appreciate the history of printing. With dozens of presses used by Colorado printers, with hundreds of cabinets of metal and glorious wood type, with shelves of books for research, the Depot will be a gathering place steeped in history.
But getting the Depot in shape will take a community. Your donations this year will help pay for a heating system – we have our eye on environmentally friendly heat pumps. In the past, your donations have provided the match for grants from the State Historical Fund that paid for significant repair work to our building, which is one of the two remaining Santa Fe depots in the country constructed in the mission style. It was moved to its current location in 1994, but left without a fourth wall, ADA access, a working roof, heat, electricity or plumbing; it needed extensive repairs throughout.
Printer Tom Parson bought it from the city in 2013 along with an easement to preserve the exterior and, in 2017, donated the building to the non-profit.
Our plans moving forward are to gain occupancy so that we can teach and learn from the community. 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