Denver is known as a young and forward-looking city, but it is also a city that values its history, especially as reflected in the architecture and character of its homes and commercial and public buildings from bygone decades.
Denver has more than 50 officially designated historic districts, meaning that exterior restoration, renovation or rebuilding of certain homes and buildings within the districts must comply with guidelines that preserve the historic character of the neighborhoods.
Kim Grant, director of Colorado’s Most Endangered Places, a program of Colorado Preservation, Inc., has worked in historic preservation for most of his adult life, starting with the Kansas Main Street program when he lived in Topeka prior to moving to Denver.
In Colorado, he was with the City of Arvada for 16 years, which included the restoration and preservation of Old Towne Arvada. He has also worked at Historic Denver Inc.
According to Grant, the historic preservation movement started in the mid-1960s. “Wholesale demolition was going on in cities and small towns across America,” Grant says.
He points to proposals in the late 1950s to replace Grand Central Station in New York City with an 80-story tower as the catalyst for preservation activism.
The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 set up a national process for identifying, surveying and protecting historical properties, under the auspices of the National Park Services.
This led to the creation of the National Register of Historic Places, and ultimately to state and local historic registries.
Grant says the National Register is an honorary listing and “has very little teeth” in terms of enforcement “unless federal funds are involved.”
It’s on the state, county and municipal level that a lot of preservation work gets done, according to Grant.
Each preservation entity can craft its preservation guidelines to be as lenient or strict as they prefer.
He notes that localities which are largely defined by their historic ambiance, such as Breckenridge, Telluride and Boulder, have much stricter architectural preservation regulations than places like Brighton or Grand Junction.
Homes and other buildings in Denver’s 50-plus locally designated historic districts are subject to design review when owners or developers make any changes to the exteriors of the properties.
Historic preservation generally does not have bearing on a home’s interior remodeling.
“The goal is to protect communities by having a stable set of ground rules, not about stopping development or being anti-progress, not a about freezing a place in time, but about ensuring that rehabilitation and development are compatible with the character of the district in regard to form, massing, scale and material.”
Historic preservation kicked off in Denver around 1970 with the threatened demolition of the storied yet deteroriating Molly Brown House at 1340 Pennsylvania St., in Capitol Hill.
The outcry against tearing down this landmark led to the creation of Historic Denver Inc., by Denver City Council, largely as a reaction to urban renewal. The Molly Brown House was listed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1972.
Among Denver’s historic districts are Pennsylvania Street, Montview Parkway, South Marion Street Parkway and eight separate districts in the Curtis Park neighborhood.
The age of a property is not the only factor in determining whether it is part of a historic district. To get a district created, Grant explains, each property within specified boundaries is evaluated for commonalities and architectural characteristics that represent a certain time period. If a property does exhibit the commonalities, it is deemed “contributing,” and is subject to design review when it comes time for rehabilitation or restoration.
If a property does not fit the criteria, it is considered “non-contributing” and is not subject to such restrictions, and can be razed.
There are parts of Denver which are historic in nature but are not designated as historic districts, and Grant says that can have undesirable consequences. He cites the Jefferson Park area adjacent to Mile High Stadium and the eastern part of Sloans Lake, which are undergoing huge transformations and are not in historic districts.
“There has been wholesale land clearance because there’s no protection, and in less than 10 years, these neighborhoods bear no resemblance to their previous historic character,” Grant laments.
“Savvy developers know how to work in historic districts, while other developers find the districts to be anti-development and too restrictive.”
The Jewish community has a number of such “savvy” developers who have respected the historic character of the areas in which they build. These include Jerrold Glick, Evan Makovsky, Mickey and Kyle Zeppelin, David Cohen, Bill Saslow, Norman Cable.
Though not Jewish, “Dana Crawford,” Grant says, “proved that old buildings still have value in the marketplace by preserving Larimer Square at a time when 40 blocks of downtown Denver were being demolished by urban renewal.
“Crawford’s model of development has marched right through the central business district in very positive ways. The city was at a tipping point back then when it could have gone either way.”
Grant believes each architectural era has its own historic character and value, but he does have some favorites, including Usonian architecture, a term coined by Frank Lloyd Wright. These are mid-century modern homes built largely from the late 1930s and into the ‘50s.
The Usonian homes are typically small, single-story dwellings without a garage or much storage. They are often L-shaped to fit around a garden terrace on unusual and inexpensive sites.
They are characterized by native materials; flat roofs and large cantilevered overhangs for passive solar heating and natural cooling; natural lighting with clerestory windows; and radiant-floor heating.
A strong visual connection between the interior and exterior spaces is an important characteristic of all Usonian homes. The word “carport” was also coined by Wright to describe an overhang for sheltering a parked vehicle.
The Denver area has some outstanding examples of Usonian neighborhoods — Krisana Park and Dahlia Lane in southeast Denver, Arapahoe Acres on the border of Englewood and Denver, and Harvey Park in Southwest Denver. The exteriors of the homes in these neighborhoods have been meticulously and proudly preserved.
Some Denver neighborhoods have not fared so well in maintaining their historic character. Many of the sprawling 1950s-style ranch homes in Hilltop have been scraped and rebuilt or had second and third stories added, resulting in homes which are not stylistically compatible with the original homes that remain.
“It’s unfortunate,” says Grant. “The scale is massive and doesn’t respect the character of the neighborhood. There have been some beautiful architect-designed homes in Hilltop that have been demolished and scraped and replaced with ‘neo’ or fake historical homes that are hugely scaled and out of character.”
Then there’s gentrification, “a double-edged sword,” says Grant, “and controversial in the preservation community.”
“Neighborhoods need reinvestment or they become stagnant and can become ghettos, but what I don’t like is development-induced displacement. It’s not good public policy and treats buildings as disposable commodities.”
Grant says that the developers themselves don’t live in these neighborhoods in which they construct new out-of-character buildings, notably the large big-box apartment buildings, which he says are “formulaic and don’t contribute to the neighborhood.”
Grant is all in favor of keeping and restoring historic buildings when they contribute to the neighborhood.
“These older homes and buildings, and the people and stories behind them are part of the identity and distinctive character of our communities and our heritage, and it’s important to maintain that. It teaches us who we are and how we got here and where we come from.
“Preservation is a way to maintain that while accommodating growth and development.”
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News