Perhaps it’s because we met in a reclaimed space in a country under construction.
It was months before South Africa’s first all-race election, the 1994 vote that ended apartheid. I had recently arrived in Johannesburg as a correspondent for The Associated Press. An American friend there heard from her father back in her hometown of Denver that another Denverite was in the region. That was Fred, who’d been a Peace Corps volunteer in neighboring Swaziland for a year. He caught a ride to Johannesburg and we all had drinks at the Yard of Ale, a bar across the patio from the Market Theatre.
The Market, famed for producing plays that were artistic confrontations of racism, was housed in an old fruit and vegetable wholesale warehouse. A lot of the early dates for Fred and me involved strolling Fordsburg and Mayfair, the warehouse and light industrial neighborhoods around the Market Theatre. We would point out beautiful buildings in rough shape and ask each other to imagine turning one architectural gem or another into a home.
In 1995, an international art exhibition titled Africus was staged in Johannesburg. It was a first major attempt to restore ties severed by the cultural boycotts mounted as protests during the apartheid years. Some of the warehouse spaces Fred and I had until then seen only from the outside were transformed into galleries for Africus. We got an exhilarating opportunity to see what modern paintings and sculpture could look like in spaces built for machinery and commerce.
The walks and talks we had taken in Johannesburg became features of how we together explored so many cities we lived in or visited. New Delhi. Cairo. London. Paris. Lisbon. Hong Kong. Peshawar. Abidjan. Barcelona.
We moved to Denver, Fred's hometown, two decades after we met in South Africa. We’d collected art from around the world in those two decades. Now we were in a cityscape -- and real estate and financial environment -- that one of us knew well. The dream of transforming something industrial into a home for ourselves and our art could be a reality. The walks and talks took on a purposefulness.
As our daughter Thandi likes to say, some of the places we looked at in Denver weren't technically for sale. As Fred likes to say, it never hurts to have the conversation.
A broker who knew of our quest told us about an old steam plant in Denver’s Clayton neighborhood. It was for sale! We bought it, of course.
Among other things, the steam plant had a rich history. It was built during World War II to heat an Army medical depot. Before that, it was the site where traveling circuses set up camp when they were performing in Denver.
The original architect, Temple Buell, is known for an extravagant touch with masonry. Our steam plant is brick and, while restrained, shows Buell’s understanding of the elegance inherent in humble materials.
Collin Kemberlin, the Denver architect who helped turn Buell’s industrial building into our home, shares our and Buell’s delight in brick, steel and concrete. Collin knows how to look and listen, enabling him to come up with a design that gracefully brought together our desires and needs.
I’ve felt at home since the first day I awoke in our steam plant, even though that morning it was full of boxes and crates. It’s taken us a few months to get unpacked. Now that books are on shelves and art on walls, I don’t just feel at home. We are home.