Hairstylist Ethel Gomez treats her customers like family.  Always has.  Some of her earliest clients, the ones that remember her salon housed in the back half of a streamlined Moderne Style building on Alameda Avenue in west Denver, bring their grandchildren to her today.  Some women recall getting their hair done while Ethel’s husband Gil gave their spouses haircuts in his barbershop in the front half of the building.  Sometimes the women joined the men up front to share news or tell jokes.  Although Gil insisted that the women’s jokes were just as colorful as the men’s, he knew that the conversation—bawdy or otherwise—served a purpose.  Like a school, church, or city hall, Gil and Ethel’s business united the community.  And their building, with its distinctive glass-block rounded corners, sleek aluminum window surrounds, and big, cornice-mounted clock, served as a neighborhood touchstone for nearly forty years.

Gil passed away in 1996.  More than 1,000 friends and relatives attended his funeral.  They remembered that he served his country in Korea and attended barber school upon his return.  They told the story about how he took second place out of a field of sixty-five barbers representing four states at a hairstyling competition held in Boulder in the 1970s.  The memorial service reminded some in attendance that a few of Gil and Ethel’s clients had passed away too. On those sad occasions Ethel paid her respects by styling the deceased friend’s hair one last time.  Recently, a grieving gentleman told Ethel that she made his wife’s hair look just like it did in life.

Barely a week after Gil died, the City of Denver informed Ethel that she would have to vacate her building.  Urban planners had targeted the structure for demolition to facilitate an Alameda Avenue street-widening project.  Already mourning her husband, Ethel tried to cope with the impending loss of her place of business too.  During the following two years, her story circulated among preservationists through newspaper articles and by word-of-mouth.  They knew only two options for the building existed: demolition or relocation.

In 1998 the City of Lakewood acquired Gil and Ethel’s place and moved it to the Lakewood Heritage Center on Wadsworth Boulevard.  Not wanting to destroy one of Denver’s few examples of Moderne architecture, the City of Denver pitched in $50,000 to save the building.  The Lakewood Heritage Center, established in 1976 as Belmar Village, interprets twentieth-century life through educational, cultural, and professional programs held in historic venues.  According to site and exhibit curator Win Filipunos, the Heritage Center has benefited from many rescued buildings.  Also the city’s liaison to the Lakewood Preservation Commission, Filipunos prefers to save buildings in their original locations. However, she recognizes that moving a building to a place where it can be restored and shared with the public is a much better option than watching bulldozers crush its walls.

After the City of Lakewood designated the structure as a local landmark, the Heritage Center sought financial assistance for a complete restoration.  In 1999 the State Historical Fund awarded the city $95,000 toward the project. Among other work, contractors restored the original terrazzo floor, fixed the curved glass block walls, replaced the stolen clock, fixed exterior neon, and replaced missing exterior ceramic tiles.  The building’s future was assured.

Still, one dilemma remained.  Because the building had been home to a dry cleaner and variety store before Gil and Ethel moved there in 1963, curators had to decide how to interpret the interior.  Ethel made part of the decision easy by contributing her memories, photographs, and some 1960s furniture and fixtures. Today, tour guides lead visitors to her salon in the back of the building, where they find three original styling stations and a manicure table.  Up front, kids and adults delight in a 1957 variety store complete with authentic toys, games, and other products displayed on period tables and shelves.

Ethel, prohibited from retirement by a clientele that wouldn’t know what to do without her, still styles hair in Lakewood.  She indulges those who want to talk about her old place, its restoration, and the days when Gil charged $1.50 for a haircut.  She is humble about her place in history.  That humility, that recognition that our everyday lives make the past significant, makes preserving her salon worthwhile.