Denver now has 50 historic districts and 330 individually designated landmarks. Such protection has done much to stabilize once-decaying urban neighborhoods and has transformed areas like the old Skid Row, reborn as the LoDo Historic District.
Denver, reports senior preservation planner Savannah Jameson of the Denver Community Planning and Development Office, is a national pacesetter in preservation and one of the country’s healthiest, still growing core cities.
But preservation has been slower to establish roots in suburbia. Arvada, Golden and Littleton have established successful main street historic districts that provide a charming, non-generic community core.
If you take any of the many tours offered during this historic preservation month of May (www:) one of the happiest surprises will be Westminster. That suburb centers on the red sandstone tower of Westminster University, the metro area’s most visible vintage landmark. Located at at West 84th Street and Lowell Boulevard, that bastion branded itself as the Princeton of the West. It failed in 1917 but its law school survived and later merged with the University of Denver School of Law. The towering Romanesque structure, designed by noted New York architect Stanford B. White with E.B. Gregory, still crowns a commanding hilltop.
Westminster has revived part of its old main artery, the 3900 block of West 73rd Avenue, complete with a restored Red and White Grocery Store, The Rodeo Super Market and the Westminster Grange Hall. The nearby Penguin Building, at 7265 Lowell Blvd., housed the pharmacy, soda fountain and post office with two landmarked schools across the street. Portions of the Church Ranch have been restored including its well which served Pioneer travelers along the Cherokee Trail when Church’s Stage Stop was the 1860s hub of what is now Westminster.
One of Colorado’s great Jewish landmarks is among Westminster’s preserved jewels: the Shoenberg Farm (1911) at 7231 Sheridan Blvd., which supplied Denver’s National Jewish Hospital. Shoenberg Farm evolved into one of the largest egg-dairy complexes in the U.S. West, then became the Dolly Madison Ice Cream farm and headquarters.
Westminster has perhaps the funkiest landmark of all: the Savery Savory Mushroom Farm Water Tower at 110th and Federal Boulevard. Charles Savery came to Denver in 1909 to try mining but soon switched to mushrooms. He started out in Denver, but the enormous amount of manure required for mushrooms led to complaints and Savery’s banishment to Adams County. There, his murky, stinky kingdom thrived, growing into 39 large buildings — the so-called caves.
Savery opened branches in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Missouri, and by the mid-1930s produced 10,000 pounds of mushrooms a day. The restored and repainted tower is the sole remnant of a once-vast agricultural empire in the suburb that has mushroomed into Colorado’s ninth-largest city.
CU-Denver historian Tom Noel welcomes your comments at .
