These properties are Denver’s latest historic district
Two days after the University of Denver men’s hockey team made history, the City Council enshrined portions of the University Park neighborhood that was built around that school as the city’s latest historic district.
In this case, university leadership was less thrilled. The administration sent a letter to the city opposing the establishment of the historic district, which contains the Buchtel Bungalow. The university owns that home, located at 2100 S. Columbine St. It was built for former DU Chancellor and Colorado Gov. Henry Buchtel in 1906, according to city documents.
The University Park Historic District became the 60th such district in the city’s portfolio of legally protected landmarks and historic areas Monday night with unanimous City Council support.
Councilman Paul Kashmann sponsored the designation in partnership with neighborhood residents who began working on the effort in 2019. Kashmann’s District 6 includes DU and the University Park neighborhood located on the east side of University Boulevard.
“I’ve watched the community evolve and while it’s a stunning place to live right now, as has been said, they’ve lost tons of beautiful, historic homes over the years,” Kashmann said at Monday’s meeting, “I don’t believe in encasing the city in amber but I do firmly believe in the importance of honoring our past these … properties will tell the story of a particular point in time and place.”
The historic district is unique in that not all the properties are near each other. It mimics the Downtown Denver Historic District as a “non- contiguous thematic district,” city officials said.
It is made of 14 historic homes, two observatories located in the city’s Observatory Park and the University Park United Methodist Church at 2180 S. University Blvd.
As Kara Hahn, the city’s landmark planning and regulatory supervisor, explained Monday, the spread- out nature of the district is largely because of the way the area developed in a piecemeal fashion around the school.
When DU moved from downtown to the plains south of the city around the turn of the 19th century, the school was in financial trouble, so it used land and free housing to attract faculty and staff, Hahn explained in her presentation.
That includes land like the parcels given to Henry Buchtel on which he built his bungalow, one of the earliest iterations of that style of home that would become commonplace across Denver later in the 20th century.