There can be no other reason for this:

If you’re in Downtown Denver and you’re looking for a bagel, you could do worse than Bruegger’s. Enter on Stout Street just north of 17th and place your order at the first counter you get to. Continue to your left to add a coffee and pay for your meal at the next counter down. Then have a seat, crack open your laptop, and sign on at the friendly splash screen (“Our WiFi is free and you are welcome to stay as long as you like. So relax and have another cuppa joe!”).

Eventually you will need to go to the bathroom. Coffee, y’know. And you will ask at the counter, and at the counter you will be told, “Go out that door and take the unlabeled door immediately on your left. Then… oh, just follow the hall. You’ll find it.”

In Downtown Denver, every eating establishment would appear to be attached, via a labyrinthine series of hallways, to the bowels of the neighboring hotel-like entity. This particular hallway will take you past the kitchen/delivery entrances of Bruegger’s, Three Sisters, and the Magnolia Ballroom (that last presumably to do with the Magnolia Hotel across 17th). Just before you get to the Ballroom’s loading dock entrance (“No Public Access”), you’ll find the restrooms.

And you’ll see the twelve-inch-thick safe door that potentially stands between the world and the men’s room.

(The women’s room, one should note, has no such safeguard.)

The door is bolted to the wall to keep in open, and there really is nothing past it but the men’s. So it’s not doing much these days besides looking impotently imposing. But I have to presume that the area housing the men’s room used to be a fully functional safe; surely one doesn’t install that kind of heavy-duty hardware for mere decoration?

Can any Denver history buffs shed light on this enigma?