Battle of the Bottle

Until last December, there was little about the Zook Building in downtown Denver to distinguish it from any other six-story office structure--except, of course, the uncompromising fact that it was named the Zook Building. But shortly before Christmas, Brown-Forman Distillers Corp. erected a gargantuan advertisement upon its roof: a $15,000, 38-ft. 9-in. model of an Old Forester bottle.

Except for a thirsty few who wistfully tried to figure out how much whisky it would hold if there were whisky in it (answer: 400,000 quarts), nobody paid much attention. But one day last month Jack Foster, editor of the Rocky Mountain News, explored a new building the newspaper is soon to occupy. Foster loves to stare at mountains, but when he looked out a second-story window he discovered that the bottle-topped Zook Building blocked the view.

"This Inglorious Thing." The next day in a News editorial he complained bitterly about "this inglorious thing [which] has disfigured my view [of] the snowy heads of Longs and neighboring Mt. Meeker . . ."

Ministers, prohibitionists and other mountain lovers began to protest, too. So many letters poured into City Hall that the mayor devoted a 30-minute radio talk to the bottle, the city engineer personally climbed up to the roof of the Zook Building to see if the ad complied with ordinances (it did) and city councilmen discussed an anti-bottle law.

Goaded by criticism, the distillery company's district manager, Stanley Barnett, rashly voiced his views to a Denver Post reporter: "Why," he cried, "should we do anything about it? Of course, if we'd known what kind of controversy it would start in this overgrown cow town we probably wouldn't have done it." Asked if he didn't think it disfigured the skyline, he asked: "What skyline have you got here?" He had hardly spoken before he was the center of a blizzard of protest.

"He Didn't Mean It." Astounded, the company hurriedly ran apologetic full-page newspaper ads which read: "He didn't mean it; we didn't mean it." It promised to pull the bottle down if a majority wanted it down. But Denver's loyal bourbon drinkers rallied strongly. Others cheered for the bottle, too. Jeff Fuller, a businessman with offices in the Zook Building itself, said: "I think it's a pretty good sign. This country was raised on whisky. Anyone who can't stand to see a little whisky, there's something wrong with them." At week's end the Battle of the Bottle was still unresolved; while waiting for a decision Denver chanted a bit of doggerel supplied for the occasion by the Rocky Mountain News:

Bottle, bottle, shining bright, Morning, noon and all the night, Up above the town so high, Like a barroom in the sky.

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