Larimer Square
The Block Where Denver Was Founded In 1858, And The City'S First Designated Historic District In 1971 Saved From Urban Renewal Demolition By A Single Preservation Campaign That Became A National Model. · Denver, Colorado
Denver started on this block. General William Larimer staked the townsite here in 1858 and the city's first bank, first bookshop, first theatre and first post office all stood along it. By the 1960s it was a skid row slated for demolition under urban renewal, and what saved it was one person: Dana Crawford, who bought the buildings from 1965 and restored them rather than clearing them, at a time when almost nobody in American cities was doing that. In 1971 it became Denver's first historic district, and the approach was copied widely afterwards. What is there now is a single block of Victorian commercial fronts strung with lights, full of restaurants and bars - which makes it the easiest place in the city to stand in a nineteenth-century street, and the reason the rest of Lower Downtown survived to be restored too. Go in the evening, when the string lights are on and the block is doing what it was restored to do, and look up - the nineteenth century is all on the upper two storeys.
1400 Larimer Street, Denver, Colorado, 80202, United States
An open public street, walkable at any hour and free. The restaurants, bars and shops along it keep their own hours, generally from late morning until late at night, and the block is at its busiest on weekend evenings and during Rockies home games at Coors Field nearby. Seasonal programming includes summer patio dining that closes the street to traffic and winter lighting through the holidays. Parking is in surrounding paid garages.