One of Loveland’s most iconic buildings now has artwork to match its recent revival.
At the recently renovated Pulliam Community Building, artist Cole Eisenhour has created a series of murals that draw on the building’s 1930s origins, echoing Works Progress Administration-era public art while reflecting the city’s past.
“I did a lot of reading beforehand,” he said. “I wanted to understand the city’s history and the people — how it was built — and then try to tell that story through the work.”
Originally constructed in 1938, the Pulliam Community Building long served as a civic gathering space in Loveland, hosting meetings, events and recreational programs for generations of residents.
After the turn of the century, however, years of wear began to take a toll, as rising maintenance costs and major repair needs threatened to sideline the historic structure.
A community fundraising effort helped turn the tide, leading to extensive renovations and the building’s reopening last November.
That renewed life now extends to the building’s walls.
Eisenhour’s murals span three locations in and around the Pulliam, each taking a different stylistic approach.
“It keeps me invigorated as an artist to experiment with different painting approaches and color palettes,” he said. “Some artists get pigeonholed into one style forever. I find that I’m constantly changing.”
In an evocative scene on the second floor, outside the conference rooms, Eisenhour places farmers and foundry workers beneath smokestacks, open sky and rolling clouds, linking the city’s agricultural roots with its industrial growth. The figures are stretched into elongated forms and rendered in a muted palette, echoing WPA-era posters.
“This one is more painterly and illustrative, and leaving the brushstrokes makes it feel more alive,” he said. “It’s my favorite out of the three.”
The Utah-based artist switched to an art deco style for the mural now gracing a wall in the Pulliam’s basement meeting room. A woman’s face in profile anchors the composition, framed by circular panels and stylized floral motifs inspired by Alphonse Mucha.
For the third mural — and the only one on the building’s exterior — Eisenhour returned to his roots, covering the elevator entrance with a blend of abstract and realist imagery that leans more heavily into bold color, geometric forms and movement.
“The exterior piece is closest to what I consider my style,” Eisenhour said. “I don’t like to be pinned down. I like to move around — it makes me more versatile.”
While the designs are carefully planned, Eisenhour said translating them onto the wall comes with its own challenges. For assistance, he uses modern tools such as projection to map out the basic shapes of his compositions, but said the most difficult part is often getting the colors just right.
“Color matching is probably the hardest thing,” he said. “You’re trying to take something from a digital reference and recreate it with paint, and sometimes it doesn’t behave the way you expect.”
Still, he said the Pulliam project came together smoothly, a reflection of both preparation and experience. After several years working full-time as a muralist, Eisenhour has completed projects across the country, but said Loveland stood out as a place that felt immediately familiar.
“It reminds me a lot of where I’m from,” he said, comparing the city’s downtown to his hometown of Ogden, Utah. “This has been a really fun trip.”
