Historical preservation was Barbara Norgren’s passion, and she spent most of her adult life working on it.
Norgren was 83 when she died of cancer Oct. 1.
A celebration of her life is planned from 1 to 4 p.m. Oct. 20 at the Grant-Humphreys Mansion, 777 Pennsylvania St.
“She had a wealth of information” on preservation, said Sally Pearce, whom Norgren worked for at the Colorado Department of Transportation.
“She kept great records, and we were always picking her brain,” said Pearce, who is retired from CDOT.
Norgren and Tom Noel, a history professor at the University of Colorado Denver, wrote a book together in 1987: “Denver: The City Beautiful and Its Architecture, 1893-1941.”
A fifth-generation Coloradan, Norgren began preservation work in the late 1960s when she did the first inventory of historic structures in the city for the Denver Landmark Preservation Commission.
She loved Colorado and the outdoors, said her daughter Jeri Norgren Neff of Denver.
In her work with CDOT, Barbara Norgren helped determine whether there were any historic treasures in areas where roads were being built or widened.
“She was never arbitrary or capricious” about which places should be saved, said Paul Foster, a retired architect who often worked with Norgren.
Saving historic structures “was about protecting Colorado’s history,” he said, adding that she “had the courage” to stand up to those against preservation, which often included building owners and developers.
Norgren was on the board of Historic Denver Inc. Her daughter remembers being with her mother in the “wee hours of the morning” watching an old house being moved to a new location.
Norgren wrote or co-wrote many nominations for buildings to be placed on the National Register and Denver Landmark Commission. The last one was written with Neff to save Quincy Farm, one of the last farmhouses in Cherry Hills.
Barbara Stewart was born in Golden on Dec. 28, 1927. She married C. Neil Norgren, and they had four children. They later divorced.
She graduated from Colorado Heights University (formerly Loretto Heights).
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by another daughter, Carol Norgren Wilbur of Denver; two sons, John Norgren of Denver and David Norgren of Davie, Fla.; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
Other Deaths
Albert Rosellini, 101, a former Washington governor who became the oldest living former governor in America, died Monday in Seattle.
A Democrat who always wore a rosebud on his lapel, Rosellini served as governor for eight years ending in 1965. His tenure in office was defined by efforts to reform state prisons and modernize mental- health institutions while shepherding through the creation of the State Route 520 floating bridge that bears his name.
In 1938, when he was 28 years old, Rosellini was elected to the state Senate and served for 18 years.
Theda Clarke, who was suspected of being involved but never charged in the 1975 killing of a fellow American Indian Movement activist in South Dakota, died Saturday at a nursing home in western Nebraska. Court records show she was in her 80s.
Prosecutors say Clarke refused to cooperate as they investigated the fatal shooting of Annie Mae Pictou Aquash on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. John Graham, the accused gunman, and Arlo Looking Cloud were convicted of murder. Prosecutors allege the trio used Clarke’s vehicle to drive Aquash from Colorado and accused Aquash of being a government informant.
The Associated Press
