Denver - Central Business District
This area was the western frontier of the Kansas Territory in 1858 when William Larimer staked a claim to a square mile of hillside overlooking the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry creek. Larimer had big plans for his unformed town and to help persuade the powers that be back in Eastern Kansas to pick his camp as the seat of Arapahoe County over the other existing mining camps he named it “Denver City” after Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver. Word had not filtered west from the capital of Lecompten, however, that Denver had already resigned his post and he would be dispensing no such favors.
Denver City got underway nonetheless as a mining settlement, where prospectors could find supplies while they sifted the sands of Cherry Creek. There wasn’t much gold but word of new strikes came along just often enough to keep the town viable while the United States Congress was hammering out the free Territory of Colorado in Washington. Denver City indeed became the Territorial Capital in 1865 but its future was far from assured. Fires and spring flooding plagued the settlement and then the Transcontinental Railroad not only passed the town by, it was routed 100 miles to the north through Cheyenne.
Worried town leaders realized there was no time to waste if there was going to continue to be a Denver. A railroad to that main line was what was needed and the Denver Pacific was formed after a fund-raising campaign by the Board of Trade netted $300,000 in three days. it would not be enough but Denver businessmen kept the enterprise afloat until the first trains rolled down the tracks on June 24, 1870.
The population of Denver at that time was 4,759. When the next census was taken in 1880 it was over 35,000. A silver strike in the Rocky Mountains in the 1870s brought more people and by the time the silver boom went bust in 1890 there were more than 100,000 people living in Denver. For most Americans there were two cities in the West - San Francisco and Denver.
At the turn of the 20th Century, 16th Street was the town’s main thoroughfare and was being compared favorably with Chicago’s State Street. Major retailers lined up down the “city promenade” and invited some of the country’s most celebrated architects to design their shopping palaces. After Union Station was constructed 17th Street attained similar prominence as a business and finance hub. So many banks congregated here that it became known as “The Wall Street of the Rockies.”
Our walking tour of Denver’s Central Business District will cover both 16th and 17th streets and we will begin at a building that 100 years ago symbolized Denver’s newly achieved status in the American West, the tallest building ever erected west of the Mississippi River when it appeared on the cityscape...
After attending the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago every civic leader in America boarded the train to return home knowing exactly what his city should look like. Large swaths of landscaped grounds with plenty of green grass and surrounded by orderly sparkling white buildings designed to look like Greek temples. In Denver the main champion for the City Beautiful movement in the early 1900s was mayor Robert W. Speer.
Denver already had a leg up on achieving the urban ideal with its recently constructed State Capitol that looked a lot like the United States Capitol. The Capitol had been sited on a hill just a few blocks from the central business district and was already attracting its share of stately mansions. Speer hired Charles Mulford Robinson to develop plans for the area and Robinson proposed creating a Civic Center flowing down from the Capitol to be lined withe new municipal buildings around the park grounds.
All was proceeding according to Speer’s vision and then the plan was voted down in the 1907 election. An then Speer got voted out of office. He continued to collect ideas for a Civic Center, however, and was eventually voted back into office in 1917, with a new charter giving the mayor expanded powers. Civic Center Park was officially opened in 1919 and the area has been the center for government, the arts, history and learning in Denver ever since.
Our walking tour of Denver’s Civic Center will begin in the center of the 15 acres of landscaped grounds with the Rocky Mountains at our back and a golden dome in front of us...
This area was the western frontier of the Kansas Territory in 1858 when William Larimer staked a claim to a square mile of hillside overlooking the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry creek. Larimer had big plans for his unformed town and to help persuade the powers that be back in Eastern Kansas to pick his camp as the seat of Arapahoe County over the other existing mining camps he named it “Denver City” after Kansas Territorial Governor James W. Denver. Word had not filtered west from the capital of Lecompten, however, that Denver had already resigned his post and he would be dispensing no such favors.
Denver City got underway nonetheless as a mining settlement, where prospectors could find supplies while they sifted the sands of Cherry Creek. There wasn’t much gold but word of new strikes came along just often enough to keep the town viable while the United States Congress was hammering out the free Territory of Colorado in Washington. Denver City indeed became the Territorial Capital in 1865 but its future was far from assured. Fires and spring flooding plagued the settlement and then the Transcontinental Railroad not only passed the town by, it was routed 100 miles to the north through Cheyenne.
Worried town leaders realized there was no time to waste if there was going to continue to be a Denver. A railroad to that main line was what was needed and the Denver Pacific was formed after a fund-raising campaign by the Board of Trade netted $300,000 in three days. it would not be enough but Denver businessmen kept the enterprise afloat until the first trains rolled down the tracks on June 24, 1870.
The population of Denver at that time was 4,759. When the next census was taken in 1880 it was over 35,000. A silver strike in the Rocky Mountains in the 1870s brought more people and by the time the silver boom went bust in 1890 there were more than 100,000 people living in Denver. For most Americans there were two cities in the West - San Francisco and Denver, The Queen City of the Plains.
Lower Downtown is where the original town of Denver City was platted with a cluster of about two dozen cabins. It was where the railroads congregated after 1880 and industry hummed. It is where Denver deteriorated first and fastest during the mid-20th century. It is where re-birth poked its head out in the 1980s after some 20% of the area’s buildings had been demolished. Today it is where America looks for an example of a revitalized historic urban streetscape and our walking tour of Denver’s Lower Downtown will begin at the symbol of the town’s signature 19th century industry...