Now the Montclair Civic Building, the Molkery was originally built by Baron von Richthofen as the Molkerei, German for “dairy.”
In the 1800s, mountain air was thought to be beneficial for persons suffering from tuberculosis, and many “consumptives” moved to Colorado (click here for a quick history). The Baron built the Molkerei as a sanatorium offering the German treatment for tuberculosis: the milk cure. The ground floor of the Molkerei housed dairy cattle; the next floor housed the patients, who lounged on the sun porches, drank the milk, and breathed in the healthful dairy effluvia with the mountain air.
The Molkerei had a second brief career as an insane asylum, but Montclair’s other residents were not happy with this use of the building, so in 1908 the building was acquired for addition to Montclair Park (a gift of Baron von Richthofen), and then it became Denver’s first community center.