With its squat office buildings and distribution centers, the land surrounding the Victory Grange Hall on Tower Road in northeast Aurora has a decidedly industrial feel.
It’s no surprise. The tracts and lots south of Interstate 70 and north of East Colfax Avenue are zoned largely as industrial land. Distribution centers for local grocery store chains and office parks crowd this stretch of South Tower Road – it looks a lot like the stretches of land visible from the stretch of the highway that runs through Aurora.
The Grange Hall stands out, with its barrel-roof architecture and its shaded entryway.
According to David McCord, the 1950s-era structure and its distinctive design speaks of another chapter of the city’s past. Victory Grange, a local chapter of the Colorado State Grange fraternal organization, built the hall in 1951 after years of fundraising. With its spacious dance hall, the structure was designed as a gathering place for the farmers and tradesmen who lived in the rural stretches of what was then unincorporated Arapahoe County and eastern Aurora.
“One of our early members from the 1950s was a chicken egg producer on East Colfax. Another gentleman was a carpenter,” said McCord, a retired employee of the city’s Planning Department and a current Grange member. “Dances and chicken dinners hosted by the Grange were sources of funding that was used to pay for the building. Some of the members were carpenters – they built it and paid for the materials.”
Tower Road looked very different in those years, McCord explained on a recent Friday afternoon. In addition to isolated farmhouses and homes, the largely rural area included the KOA radio complex, Sky Ranch Airport and Emil-lene’s Steakhouse. The KOA radio tower gave the street its name; Emil-lene’s is still serving steaks and spaghetti. When McCord moved to Colorado from Oregon, the Victory Grange Hall located at 2025 Tower Road was still on the fringes of the city.
“My parents came to visit here. My mother was a pianist and she played for one of the ceremonies here,” said McCord, who first visited the Aurora hall after he moved from Oregon in 1971. “There are a lot of folks who came here who passed away … a lot of ghosts,” he added as he walked through the building’s dance hall. The building has been restored over the years, but the floor still bears the scuff marks of generations of square dances, and the walls bear dozens of black-and-white photos from events through the decades.
More than 60 years after a group of farmers, craftsmen and other Grange members came together to build a place for meetings, dances and social events, the Victory Grange Hall is set to become one of the city’s Cultural Heritage Sites. In a ceremony planned for 10 a.m. on May 12, members of the Aurora Historic Preservation Commission will unveil the first plaque of its kind of the building’s north wall. The award is a tribute to the Victory Grange Hall’s continued role in the community, as well as its status as one of Aurora’s rare architectural monuments.
The recognition comes as the local Grange chapter struggles to remain relevant and attract new members. The organization is still largely geared toward the agricultural community, and McCord said the local chapter stresses community involvement, economic development and education. While the organization’s numbers have dwindled locally since the Victory Grange Hall went up in 1951, the building remains an active site in northeast Aurora.
“The square dancers come once or twice a month. We rent to a number of users, some of whom bring a whole orchestra or a DJ,” McCord said, adding that a Samoan Christian congregation holds ceremonies in the main hall. “We have birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries.”
The hall stands along with the former Fitzsimons Army base and the Aurora Fox theater as one of the city’s oldest landmarks, a physical relic of Aurora’s rural past. Unlike those sites, however, the Grange hall hasn’t been rebuilt or redeveloped. Apart from basic renovations, the structure has remained frozen in time, a snapshot of an era when Tower Road was a much different place.
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707