The December 16, 1922 issue of the “Steel Sparks” newsletter describes the scene on December 9, 1922 in Downtown Denver as over 120,000 people jammed the new Steel’s Department Store at 16th and Welton, now the renovated Sage Building.
To read the full account of the Denver store opening, which included in the basement a 500-seat Cafeteria complete with a 10,000-dish-per-hour dishwashing machine, click here to download it in PDF (2.9 mb).

Here’s a photo from the newsletter of the Steel’s Department Store the afternoon before the grand opening:

Throughout these many newsletters, President L. R. Steel has always been referred to in glowing terms and hailed as the glorious leader and beloved founder of the Steel’s department store chain. Interestingly, according to researcher Dave Dyer, Mr. Steel was deposed as the head of the company just two weeks after the Denver store opened. Perhaps he personally wrote the newsletter. In March, 1923, Mr. Steel died of a stroke and the company went out of business just a few months later.