Neighborhood Memory Project - Globeville, Elyria, Swansea

Gracious, intelligent and sharp - Bob Padboy has almost a century of memories and is a good storyteller. Padboy was born in 1924 in a coal town in New Mexico, where his Slovenian-born father, Anton, worked in the mines. His mother Mary insisted that none of her three boys would would follow their father in the coal fields and the family moved to Globeville. Padboy is the oldest Globeville resident whose reminiscences were recorded for the Globeville, Elyria and Swansea Memory Project, and still lives in the family’s home in the neighborhood. 

 Bob Padboy in 2018. Photo® Mary Lou Egan

 

The Padboy house was purchased in 1940. Photo® Mary Lou Egan 

Anthony Garcia is the youngest person interviewed for the Memory Project, but his roots in the neighborhood run deep.“I was born and raised in Globeville, my mother worked at the Globeville Recreation Center for years, and my grandmother was an artist.” Garcia brought his family heritage of service to the community and creating art together. He is the co-founder of the BirdSeed Collective and has been named the director of the Globeville Recreation Center at 4496 Grant Street. Garcia hopes the center will again be a source of information and activity - “to keep the community a community.”

 Anthony Garcia at work. Photo® Mary Lou Egan  

BirdSeed Collective Mural - Where Wood Meets Steel
on Washington Street, Photo® Mary Lou Egan

To hear the stories of Globeville, Elyria and Swansea, view these priceless interviews 
Globeville, Elyria, Swansea Memory Project

The Cozy Theater

In Globeville’s early years, Washington Street hummed with small businesses - grocers, feed stores, barber shops, blacksmiths, shoe repair shops and billiard and soft drink parlors. For kids, the only building they remembered was the Cozy Theater.
Andy Jackson recalled, “When we were kids, we used to go to the Cozy Theater - we’d pay a nickle to get in and a nickle to buy popcorn. An old Italian, Belforte, had a popcorn wagon that was glassed in with a gas burner, and he’d sit there and shake it. He had a little teapot that he’d melt butter in. We’d go in there with a bag of popcorn in our hand. And Annie Peterson, she used to play the piano in there — they were silent movies, you know — and when she got excited by something that was happening on the screen, she’d beat the hell out of that piano.”
Ed Wargin was another kid who loved going to the movies. “They used to have these serials that would just keep goin’ and goin’ and so we would just keep goin’ and goin.’ ‘Ruth of the Rockies’ was the main feature with Ruth Roland. I remember that because we went all the time. Sometimes we’d go twice a week and see the same one. They weren’t open every day — it was Wednesday, Saturday and I think Sunday. It seemed like vacation time for us kids. We had so much to do, but this was really special.”
The theater was one of the many properties owned by Konstantly Klimoski. Originally located at 47th and Washington and then relocated farther north across the railroad tracks. Jackson recalled, “It was a storefront kind of thing, not very big.”
The repeal of prohibition led to the demise of the Cozy Theater since Klimoski could make more profit from a saloon than from dime movies. The tavern and the theater are both gone now, but the memories of Belforte and his popcorn wagon, live music and the drama of Western serials live on.

 

4855 Washington in 2016 - one of the addresses for the Cozy Theater

 

Ruth Roland starred in many Western serials

Theme music helped set the mood