June 4, 2009

The Tivoli Club, alias "the slaughter pen"


(click image to enlarge)
THE TIVOLI CLUB
("the slaughter pen")

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"Open day and night
Wines, liquors, and cigars

Headquarters for gentlemen
First class goods and First class attention."

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Played a Missourian for $45.
Willliam Johnson, a tall, gawky Missourian, on his way to the Puget sound country, fell into the hands of bunco steerers yesterday and was relieved of $45. The old bank-draft game was played on Johnson after he was enticed into one of the gambling rooms over the Tivoli saloon, Seventeenth and Market streets.
Rocky Mountain News, July 14, 1893.

The photograph above shows the Denver, Colorado property and building built and owned by William Deutsch. To date I have been able to find out little about this structure. However, I have plenty of information regarding one of it's tenants, Jefferson "Soapy" Smith leased the rooms at 1337 (downstairs) & 1339 (upstairs) Seventeenth street on the south-east corner of Market street (marked with the arrow) for his saloon and gambling den. between 1888 and1895. Due to the swindles and violence that occurred in the confines of the Tivoli, the Rocky Mountain News referred to the club as "the slaughter pen."

Grand stories of the Tivoli Club and it's bloody history will be detailed in the soon to be released, Alias Soapy Smith The Life and Death of a Scoundrel, available in August 2009.


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