History of Larimer Square with Steve Turner

"Kenda (00:05)
Welcome to Living Colorado's Getting Real Estate. I'm Kenda and this is John.

Hi, everybody. So we're both relatively new to Colorado. And we feel like even if you're a Denver native or if you've just moved to Colorado, there's so many things to learn about Denver, about restaurants, places to go, neighborhoods, the history of Denver. And that's kind of why we started this podcast, because whether you you've been here for a while, there's always something new that you can learn about.

Living in Denver.

Today we are hanging out in Larimer Square. And I know I sound like I'm from Georgia when I say that. I recognize I practice saying it not like Larimer Square, but that's just how it comes out for me. And we're hanging out in the Apollo Hall, which is

Such a beautiful part of Larimer Square. Introduce Apollo guest today. Yeah, exciting. So we're here with Steve Turner. He is, and he I want to make sure I get this right, but he is the director of the Dana Crawford Preservation Program. And for those of you who don't know who Dana Crawford is, you will by the end of this episode. He's also the former executive director of History Colorado. Steve, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Well, we're so happy to have you. I'm glad to be here. And I have to tell you, you're not the only person who would have said Larimer that way. a lot of the original settlers

of Denver were actually from Georgia because the first gold rush in the country was in Georgia and those gold miners came out here to mine out here. So there would have been a lot of people saying the name of the street that way. Okay. Well that makes me feel better. Totally. I know we went to a western

what is it western Denver Western the Western Stock Show the Western Stock Show and it was huge. So there's a lot of of of Western influence. Well good I don't feel so bad. Yeah. So Steve, you know, knowing that you knew Dana Crawford, I think maybe giving a little bit of history about who she was sure and what she did for the city. Okay, great. I'm happy to talk about it. So we're sitting in a building right now that is here completely because of Dana Crawford.

And let me kind of backtrack and say to begin with, we are very close to where Denver actually started. If you go down to the end of the block here, we may do that a little bit later to film something, you'll find a bell surrounded by a parking lot. And the reason it's there is it was from the first City Hall building for Denver. The building is gone, but the bell was kept as kind of to commemorate that location.

In 1850, Larimer Street was platted by General William Larimer, and it was one of the first streets in Denver. And the buildings here mostly date from the 1860s and 70s. Wow. And they're really a spectacular example of what Denver looked like at one point in time.

Fast forward to 1960, downtown Denver, like

many cities in America is really sort of decaying, result of a couple of things, part of that having to be with the creation of the interstate system. and it even has this history around school segregation and white flight and all those kinds of things. And the government, the United States government decides that they really want to reinvigorate American cities. And they create this program,

urban renewal program. And the intention is to tear down all these horrible ratty old buildings and then have the development community come in and build new buildings. So there's a plan put forth for Denver. It's 27 blocks in the downtown. And the Denver Renewal Authority was successful in demolishing

twenty-six blocks of downtown Denver.

But in the late 60s, a woman named Dana Crawford moves to Denver. She is from Salina, Kansas. She goes to Radcliffe College in Boston and falls in love with old walkable brick neighborhoods. She comes to Denver and she wants to keep some of that character here. And she

comes across Larimer Square. At that time it really was Skid Row. There were a lot of homeless people down here. There was a story, not completely sure it's 100% accurate, but there's a story that Dana was driving around looking, she had this idea of trying to save an old part of of Denver, driving around and her car was a hot day and her car actually got vapor lock on this block. And this is before cell phones. So she's sitting there and some guy comes up and

explains your car's got vapor lock, you gotta let it cool down and it'll start back. And she starts to look around and she starts to notice these buildings. And she's surrounded by really rundown buildings. They almost all were used appliance stores. Almost all of them. This was like used appliance alley and a bunch of homeless people. And she thinks to herself, I think I found my block. And then she starts this very really for the time very sort of

forward thinking process about these places need to be preserved and how do I go about doing that. And she has all these challenges. First off, she's trying to b buy 20 properties from 21 different owners, all immediately next to each other. She doesn't want them to know that what she's doing because the prices will immediately go up. Yeah. also, interestingly enough, she's a woman in the 1960s and she talks about

Trying to get a loan from a bank. Her husband's a geologist. He has nothing to do with this. But he has to go with her to the bank because he has to co-sign. This is the sixties. This wasn't like it the eighteen hundreds. No, no, this is this is actually up until I think it was like nineteen seventy two or something or seventy-eight. This is in my lifetime. Yeah. And so she's at the bank, she's explaining what she's wanting to do. And she says she finishes and the banker turns to her husband and starts asking all these questions. She's like

He has no idea. He's a geologist. So anyway, she fast forward, she's successful in acquiring almost all of the buildings. There was one she she was not able to acquire until the owner actually passed away. and then she's gotta figure out how to actually get businesses into these buildings and get people downtown. And that's there's a whole sort of legacy there of how challenging that was and how she ends up having to create half the businesses herself.

And ultimately though, she is very lucky. She lands this one business, it's called my uncle's mustache. It's like a pizza joint, jazz like yeah, you know, with a banjo and stuff. And it just takes off. And this becomes the place in Denver to be on a Friday or Saturday night. So it's like nineteen seventies at this point. Yeah, early seventies. Okay. So how do you how do you think like her vision

for Larimer Square influenced not only Lodo, like you said, right? But but just in general, don't we? Well, that's what I think is really the real strength here is Dana introduces really to Americans, not just here in Denver, but really literally across the country. I mean, she had an influence across the country, the importance of preserving some of these places, that they're so unique in their character and their places that people want to be and

if they are properly taken care of and reused, they're places that not only do people want to be, but from a real estate perspective, they really are at a premium. They're you know, we're not creating more places that look like this. And so she begins to create this sort of preservation ethos here in Denver. She moves from Larimer Square, she moves next to the Oxford Hotel at a time that

you know, no one thought about staying down here. It was Skid Row. in fact, there's a story there that she starts the hotel. It's so off-center that people don't want to stay there. The hotel goes into chapter eleven bankruptcy. She finally gets it out of bankruptcy. She continues to operate the hotel. It goes back into chapter eleven bankruptcy. She refers to that as chapter twenty-two bankruptcy. but ultimately she gets out of that

And sh the hotel begins to, like Larimer Square, begins to be a place to be. And people want to be there because they want that unique character. And then she goes from there, she buys, she has this idea, she builds one of the first lofts, apartments, condos here in Denver. It's called the Edbrooke So she's doing these little sort of projects around this area that catalyze what is ultimately going to become a a a neighborhood we call Lodo, lower downtown, which

is one of the premium residential areas if pe especially if people want to have that very urban kind of lifestyle. Live in life live in lofts be able to walk out, walk to restaurants, walk to any of the amenities of the downtown, the theater di the district is not far from here. So she builds this kind of vision of a city that

really capitalizes on its history and on the historic character of this particular neighborhood. Yeah, you mentioned the word vision, which I was thinking about Dana, I was just thinking, what a visionary. To look at a place that is so dilapidated and when the nation is even in this mode of let's build new things. Exactly right. And she's like, wait a minute, no. And she was such a visionary and you also mentioned that she

She stopped and just looked around and because of her car. And one of the things that I notice about Larimer Square is it it's a place that makes you just want to slow down and look around and take that in. Do you think that was intentional? I think it's absolutely. I mean, I think that's one of the things that Dana was very conscious of. And I think I think urban planners, developers, architects really and and people in general,

really realize that the value of these places is that they are built at a time when we built in a human scale. We now really build things in an automobile scale, right? That drive-throughs, big shopping centers, all those things are built to drive to, you do transact your business or whatever, and you leave, and you're not there to see the architecture. And it doesn't have, and as a result, it doesn't have that

charm, that character, that sort of pedestrian scale that makes you slow down because you're gonna notice some little detail you've never noticed before. So that I think is one of the strengths of a n a historic neighborhood like this is you can leave your condo, leave your house, walk around, and you're gonna see something new every time. Absolutely. something you didn't notice, even if you've walked down that street a hundred times. and and I I absolutely think Dana

That's what attracted her to this kind of architecture was that I would call it almost the magic that's in the architecture. Yeah, you know, and I think I I and I I totally agree. I think, you know, we're so consumed by today AI and how fast things can go. You know, there is a moment like what you said, when you get to a place that makes you just kind of slow down a little bit. You mentioned the Crawford Hotel, you know, at Union's at Union Station. I did not realize it was Dana Crawford's.

Hotel. Yeah. look if that's an interesting fact. But that there is something also about that place that is just interesting. Do you feel like the spirit of Denver, the feel of Denver, while it has changed, you know, you you t I talked to a lot of locals that have been here, natives that have been here for a long time, and they keep saying how much Denver has changed over the years and and you can see that progress. But do you feel like places like Larimer Square or Tennyson Street, others, you know, i you know, in in and around kind of are what

The Denver spirit is yeah. No, I I absolutely think that. I mean, I can think of other of the other historic neighborhoods that are in this city. And I think I don't think it's coincidental that the most valuable or the most desired real estate in almost all cases is in a historic neighborhood, whether it's you know, all the way from country club neighborhood to Park Hill to Washington Park.

To Congress Park, those are all historic areas. And I think that's really the to your point, I think that's where you feel this spirit and this uniqueness maybe of Denver that's a little bit different than wherever you if you're from somewhere else. and I also think that those areas, again, it just gets back to they kind of inspire, I think if you live there, they're the kind of neighborhoods that you say, I really love this neighborhood.

I just love being here. Yeah. For you know, it lifts up my spirit as I'm walking around or lifts makes me feel good. you can't say that about all all residential neighborhoods. You know, some areas they just sort of lack that soul. Yeah. And that's what I love about the older parts of of Denver I agree. I you know, I and I think to your point about preservation, you know, you go to DC.

And there are neighborhoods in that in in DC that definitely have that historic. They've maintained a lot of those buildings. I came from Austin. There's not a lot of that preservation that's happened in Austin. There are a few neighborhoods that have some older homes in the 40s, 50s. That's not like in the eighteen nineties, eighteen eighties. There's homes you know, in our neighborhood that that were built in 1890, but I do like that aspect of Denver, right? Where there's been this preservation, intentional preservation.

And and do you feel like like the Dana Crawford or or I know you you're also a member of the Historic Preservation like that there's intent in saving some of these old Abs Absolutely. I mean, Dana was definitely involved in that. There there are several people that really drove that early on. I mean the there's an organization called Colorado Preservation Inc., they have the Dana Crawford Awards every year for historic preservation to honor her. So clearly she was

one of the primary drivers. There were lots of other folks who were involved in that. But I think it's not accidental that the very first historic district designated in Denver is Larimer Square. And then kind of some of the other historic neighborhoods come out after that time. But but Dana brought that vision and then other people really built on it. There are a number of folks

that I could name that were instrumental in helping us save you know the parts of Denver that make us love Denver so much. But you know, I've I've been here for 33 years and I love Denver and a big part of the reason why I love Denver Denver is because it still has these wonderful historic areas that you can can visit, go shop in, live in, work in. Yeah. I actually there's a there's a story I just thought of we I was sitting at the

Crawford Hotel one time with Dana. We're having a drink. And when you sat with Dana, it was kind of like sitting with the Queen of England. People just came up all the time. Kind of how you feel when I'm here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And they'd be like, Dana, you know, and she had no idea who most of these people were. And this lady came up and said, I have to tell you, you saved this building that my husband, who has passed away, that he worked in all his life, and now my son works in this building.

And every time I walk by this building that you saved, I think about my husband. And I thought, Wow. That's pretty powerful to say but just you know, yeah. That is have that impact on people you don't even know. Right. Right. And I think the state of our culture too right now is everything's so transient and everything's fast moving. And I'm just wondering what you think about in Apollo culture, what draws us.

to these older buildings and these older structures. You know, I think that it's a different I I have a personal answer to that that I'll give you, but I think that can mean there's a different meaning to that for every person. I think every person comes to what you're describing in a different way. I will say for me personally, you know, there there are a couple of things that draw me to these kind of neighborhoods. First is just this sort of this feeling of time.

And you were talking about how, or maybe it was you, John, we're talking about how in this world now everything's fast, everything's quick, gotta be quick. And this sense of something that has just been here and is still here gives you this kind of feeling of, you know, you are you're kind of solid too. You're kind of grounded. Grounded some. Yeah, it's very grounded. and so there's that kind of sense of time, that sense of memory. I mean

again, a lot of people come to it from different different angles. I mean, I know some people who come to it from really an environmental perspective because we talk about recycling newspapers and cans and all those kinds of things. Well, I guess not newspapers because no one uses newspapers. Back then we had newspapers. Back in the day. But, you know, how environmentally efficient is it to be able to recycle an entire reuse an entire building instead of building a brand new building? so I feel like there are a lot of different

reasons. But you know, for me personally, it's just this sense of really connecting with the passage of time in a very positive way, in a way that makes me feel more rooted and grounded in in Apollo culture and in Apollo country. There's so much history I think that's lost, right? When I think we were at the the Colorado Preservation in Gala and there was a picture they're talking about a building that had been restored.

And there was a picture of the guy's dad back from you know 19 or something in the same room that he was standing in. Wow. They were working to to to retain. Yeah. Right. And there's I mean, I get chill sometimes. You know, like that's just a cool aspect when you have that intent to sort of that save that that spirit in that history. Well, what I loved about that story too, I don't know if you remember, but so the guy was the the banker who did the the loan for the building and when he was

Seeing it taking a tour, they said, We want to show you this room. And I think the people that were restoring the building had the photo. right. And they said they said, That's even better. Does this photo does this look familiar to you? And it was his dad standing in that room. Yeah. In that exact room. Yeah. It's just it's it's it's such an anchor. Yeah. It really is amazing. So I always think of that too when I think, you know, you see these photos, like all the buildings along Larimer Square. And usually, you know, I'm talking

late eighteen hundreds and it would be the owner, shopkeeper who built the building. And they would be out front of the building, very proud of the building with all of their staff or whatever, you know, in their shopkeeping gear. And I think, Wow Like, you know, like it was a big deal. You were proud of this place. And I compare that to, you know, not to name specific names, but contemporary, you know, like

There's Ray Croc standing in front of a McDonald's and say, yeah, whatever. Right. You know, maybe it's a bad example. But but there was this pride in building these places with the idea that they would not only be beautiful, but that they would be here for for time and they be here. Legacy built. That's right. That's right. And we don't take that way anymore. We don't build that way. Yeah. Certainly. Yeah. And I've seen buildings that, you know, were built in ten, fifteen years they're torn down and repurposed for something else. Right. And nothing is saved.

I think, you know, when when we first moved to Denver, actually it was before we moved here, it was April of of last year, I believe, and I came to Ocean Prime, which is here in Larimer Square. And I just remember seeing the string lights, you know, and just how magical it was to have a space like this, you know, not knowing that, you know, I'd meet you. Yeah. Right. And and learn about Dana Crawford and and everything that she's done that she did for the city. Well, Dana said an interesting thing kind of to that one time.

it's almost the very first time I met her. at the time I was exec director Historic Denver and we were at we were having a drink. Obviously, there's a theme here. We had a lot I had a lot of drinks with Dana. She she liked to drink. and she we were talking about preservation, and she said, I'm going to tell you something that you can't tell other people, but I've told a bunch of people say. Yeah. Like you're telling a lot. And she says,

People say I'm a great preservationist. She says, I'm not a preservationist. She says, What I'm about is building pl places, community using old buildings. And I think that's kind of what you were experiencing too. It was a place. It was a it was a special place, a memorable place. It just happened to be surrounded by old buildings. Yeah. I mean, I think to your you mentioned this earlier, like that's that that's that happy accident on those, right? Although there's intent, you still have to get

the businesses here and she got what was it big mustache or what was my uncle's mustache. My uncle's mustache. I like big mustache. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I I can't draw a big mustache. My there you go. She she actually has a bigger building on the end of the block that she actually created a little department store. It was called Crawford. And it was there for a few years. And she said one time she had one of the executives from the May Company, which was based here in Denver department store, come through

And he said, Dana, you don't have a single thing in this store that you can sell profitably. She she was so green. She just, you know, opened a department store. She just try she's brave and she would try anything. Yeah. Nobody could tell her no. No, exactly. No, you could not tell her no. That is true. I love that. I love that. Well, this has been super amazing having you here talking to us about yeah, absolutely. Been lot of fun. and we will we hope to have more episodes if you don't quit us.

In the future. So there's so much about Denver and history of Colorado even that that to talk about and and hear all these great stories for sure.

Actually, I think it'd be fun for us to go take a walk and we can walk around and wander and you can show us great things. I think that'd be really fun. Let's do that. I think that'd be perfect.

Well, that's a wrap for today. But next week on Apollo episode of Getting Real Estate Living Colorados podcast.

We're gonna have a special guest as well, going back to Apollo Cabo theme. You know, once a month we talk about Cabo and the Cabo connection that we have a little bit. And we're gonna be having a wonderful man who lives in Cabo and has for many years. His name is Lew Gallo, and he's gonna talk to us about some of the projects that he's working on in Cabo right now. Yeah, absolutely. It's gonna be a that'll be a great conversation. He's really an interesting guy. remember to drop your comments, like and subscribe to our podcast. It really helps us out.

Also, want to give another shout out to Apollo Hall here in Larimer Square. It is a beautiful event center here in Larimer Square. Used to be an old saloon back, a long time ago at an old department store. A lot of history here, but I know you can't see it, but we're gonna take some some video that that shows string lights. It's a beautiful windows, it's a beautiful space. Apollo Hall, thanks for having us out here. We really appreciate it. And we'll see you next week. Bye.
"