A Short History of Denver by Stephen J. Leonard Thomas J. Noel

Author:Stephen J. Leonard, Thomas J. Noel [Stephen J. Leonard, Thomas J. Noel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781943859191
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Published: 2016-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

By 1965 there were more than fifty shopping centers in the metropolitan area, and downtown department stores were withering. As they died, the core city remained alive in part because of the Sixteenth Street Mall, another I. M. Pei creation, which, beginning in the early 1980s, gave the central city a human-scale main street, more welcoming to pedestrians than skyscraper-lined canyons. Department stores, such as the Denver Dry Goods Company; banks, such as Colorado National; warehouses; and other buildings were reincarnated as lofts, apartments, and hotels. Larimer Square (a historic preservation triumph spearheaded in the mid-1960s by developer Dana Crawford), the Denver Pavilions, the Tabor Center, new hotels and restaurants, residential towers, brewpubs and nightclubs, and the Santa Fe and other arts districts similarly drew people from the periphery into the center.

Core City Attractions

Museums and other attractions also contributed to the core’s vibrancy. Among the most significant were the Denver Performing Arts Complex, the Denver Public Library, the Denver Art Museum (DAM), the History Colorado Center, the Clyfford Still Museum, the Kirkland Museum of Fine and Decorative Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the American Museum of Western Art housing the Anschutz Collection, the US Mint, the state capitol, the Children’s Museum of Denver, Elitch Gardens Theme Park, Coors Field, the Pepsi Center, and the Denver Broncos Sports Authority Field at Mile High. A few miles east of downtown, the Denver Zoo, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the Denver Botanic Gardens added to the city’s vitality.

DAM grew out of the Artists’ Club, a group founded in the 1890s. In 1949 the museum secured an ideally located permanent downtown home by remodeling old buildings between Acoma and Bannock Streets on West Fourteenth Avenue, steps away from the City and County Building. Over the years, it received splendid gifts, including Anne Evans’s collection of Native American and Hispanic art. Evans, one of the city’s great cultural leaders, appreciated Indians more than her father, territorial governor John Evans, did. In the late 1960s, local architect James Sudler teamed with Italian architect Gio Ponti to create the fortresslike, tile-clad Ponti-Sudler building at West Fourteenth Avenue and Bannock Street. In 2006 the titanium-sheathed, angle-worshipping Hamilton wing designed by Daniel Libeskind was crowded onto a nearby site at West Thirteenth Avenue and Acoma Street.

DAM’s wings juxtaposed with the Denver Public Library, the north section (1956) designed by Burnham Hoyt and the south (1995) by Michael Graves, created architectural exuberance dangerous to the sensibilities of the overly sensitive. More restrained attractions nearby include the Byers-Evans House Museum (1883–89) at 1310 Bannock. Once the home of pioneer newspaper editor William N. Byers, it later belonged to territorial governor John Evans’s son William Gray Evans and his descendants. To the south, the Clyfford Still Museum (2011, architect Brad Cloepfil) at 1250 Bannock houses a large collection of Still’s works. And a short walk to the southeast, history fans enjoy the History Colorado Center (2009) on East Twelfth Avenue and Broadway, designed by David Tryba.

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