Denver has one of the country's more livable and walkable downtowns. The 16th Street Pedestrian Mall (1982, I. M. Pei and Partners) and the Lower Downtown (LoDo) Historic District, designated in 1988, have reversed deterioration of the city core. Urban renewal in the 1960s erased many of the city's grandest monuments, replacing them with high rises between 14th and 20th streets and Curtis and Larimer streets. Construction tapered off after a new generation of glass and masonry towers arose during the energy boom of the 1970s and early 1980s. LoDo's nineteenth-century red brick, sandstone, and rhyolite commercial buildings of one to seven stories have been rejuvenated with art galleries, night clubs, cafes, and residential lofts. This upscale historic district in what had been Denver's skid row has attracted such major developments as Coors Field, Elitch Gardens amusement park, a projected indoor sports arena, and a planned aquarium.
Broadway, Denver's main north-south axial, cuts across the original, skewed grid of named and numbered streets and divides east and west numbers on the avenues of the cardinal grid. The free 16th Street mall shuttle from the Civic Center RTD Terminal ( DV014) at Broadway and 16th Avenue stops at most of the named streets mentioned below.
Writing Credits
If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.
SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.