1962 TRAGEDY: BLAZE KILLED WAITRESS, INJURED 50 AT DENVER'S ALBANY HOTEL

Coffee shop waitress Stella Bruce resting after a busy shift when fire struck the Albany Hotel in downtown Denver on Sept. 2, 1962.

The four-alarm blaze started in the basement of the seven-story hotel at 17th and Stout streets and burned for more than four hours.

Bruce, 35, was discovered dead on a dressing room cot where she was napping.

"She had apparently just finished a hard day's work," Deputy Fire Chief Cassio Frazini told the Rocky Mountain News. "Mrs. Bruce had unfastened the top button of her blouse and lay down on the cot with her glasses in her hand."

The blaze injured 50 people. Firefighters saved three trapped in an elevator. Some were brought down by ladders. Denver Firefighter Frank LaSasso rescued Captain Jack Lynch who was overcome by smoke. Once revived the captain returned to battling the fire.

The Albany Hotel had 300 rooms. Parts of the interior collapsed, including in the ballroom.

Assistant Fire Chief Vernon "Bud" Parrahm said: "It seemed like we had it under control as we fought our way to the basement when suddenly the fire broke free and shot to the back of the building and up to the first floor."

Hotels of the post-World War 2 era were plagued by a lack of maintenance and investment owing to the Great Depression and shortages of building supplies during the war.

Immediately following the war, in 1946, fires killed 19 people at the Canfield Hotel in Dubuque, Iowa, 61 at the LaSalle Hotel in Chicago and 119 at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta.

A total of 26 Denver fire crews, including a civil defense reserve, battled the stubborn blaze at the Albany Hotel.

One firefighter said: "We just couldn't get to the damn thing."

Fire crews from Skyline, Arvada, Aurora, Englewood, Littleton, Bancroft, Pleasant Valley, College View and Evergreen helped cover the rest of the city on that terrible day in September 1962.

The hotel closed in 1976 and was demolished to make way for a skyscraper. 

[Photo: Post Card]