page_title: Aspen Community Church
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Aspen Community Church / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Pipe organ facade as seen inside the Aspen Community Church of Aspen, Colorado.
context_page_description: Aspen Community Church is located at the intersection of East Bleeker and North Aspen streets in Aspen, Colorado, United States. It is a stone building erected in the late 19th century. In 1975 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the only house of worship in Pitkin County to be accorded that distinction.
  When built, it was originally the home of a Presbyterian congregation. Several decades later, when Aspen's population had declined considerably from the era when the church was built, the church merged into a Methodist congregation in the city, part of an agreement by which a Methodist church elsewhere in Colorado became Presbyterian. The church building, restored in the early 21st century, is largely intact from its original construction.
  During the work, the largest organ on the Western Slope was installed. The church, often compared to a fortress or castle in appearance, has been a popular local music venue and is used annually by the Aspen Music Festival for recitals. It hosts two children's music camps of its own every summer, among a range of programs that include yoga and a mission to Kenya.
context_section_description: Construction began on the church in 1890. At that time, Aspen had experienced rapid growth in the preceding decade, from a rough campsite to a bustling city of thousands due to the Colorado Silver Boom. The Richardsonian Romanesque church by Frederick Albert Hale, designer of the First Congregational Church in Pueblo and the Aspen and Cowenhoven blocks downtown, used the same distinctive orange peachblow sandstone, quarried in the nearby valley of the Fryingpan, a tributary of the Roaring Fork, as other Aspen landmarks like the Wheeler Opera House and Brand Building. A thousand people attended the church's dedication ceremony in 1891, the conclusion of ten months of building that cost $20,000 ($569,000 in contemporary dollars). There the cornerstone vault was filled. The Aspen Daily Times was the first to liken the building to a fortress or castle.
  Two years after the church's completion, Aspen's fortunes changed for the worse. At the onset of the Panic of 1893, Congress repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, the underpinning of the city's growth and prosperity. Over the next decades, the population began to decline as the local economy shifted to ranching and what little silver mining the market could still sustain, a period in the city's history known as the "quiet years". The church continued to hold services, but by 1934, with Aspen's population down to a few hundred, the congregation was too small to continue.
  A solution came in an agreement with the local Methodist church, which was also feeling pressured. In Loma, on Colorado's western border, a similar situation had developed with a Presbyterian and Methodist church contemplating a merger. The four churches agreed to merge into two and swap denominations. The Aspen church became Methodist and the previously Methodist Loma church became Presbyterian.
  In the following decades, Aspen was slowly reborn as a popular and pioneering ski resort and second-home community for the wealthy and famous. The combined church grew with it. The round stained-glass window on the Bleeker side was added in 1966.  In the 1980s, the building was extensively restored inside and out in anticipation of its centennial. Most of its finishes had never been modernized, so they regained their original appearance afterwards. The basement was gutted to make it even more usable for community events, and the side entrance was added.
  It was completed in time for the 1990 observances. A later renovation added the largest organ on Colorado's Western Slope to the sanctuary. In 2009, structural engineers and other experts hired by the church told it the building's structural system was handling 12 times the load it was designed for. The church met in the Aspen Historical Society's property at the former Wheeler–Stallard House for six weeks while tie rods were installed in the ceiling.
caption: Pipe organ facade at the Aspen Community Church
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