Phil Goodstein
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Author Phil Goodstein is a Denver native who has churned out more than 20 volumes about the Mile High City. Not only has he seen to it that the volume is very well illustrated but, as is his wont, he emphasizes history from the bottom up. He explores controversies over the use of the Civic Center while emphasizing the way the different hopes and perspectives of various classes and economic interests have shaped the community. In a word, The Denver Civic Center is not just a history of the land in and around the Civic Center, but it is a profile of Denver as a whole. It is must reading for anybody seeking to grasp the nature of the Mile High City. Information about Goodstein’s books can be found below and at capitolhillbooks.com
July – August 2026
Talks and Tours by Phil Goodstein
Private tours are available. Books may be ordered from CapitolHillBooks.com, 303–837–0700 or bookelves@westsidebooks.com, 303–480–0220. Copies of Fairmount: Denver’s Ultimate Cemetery are available for $35.00, tax and post paid, from New Social Publications, Box 18026; Denver 80218.
Copies of Denver Jewish Cemeteries are available for $27.00, tax and post paid, from New Social Publications, Box 18026; Denver 80218.
Be sure to check out Fairmount: Denver’s Ultimate Cemetery at the book events. Click Here to Read the 9News Article
Phil has a new book that Tells the Story of Denver Streets – Scroll below for more information and to learn how to obtain your own copy with a special event on July 11th!
HEALTH NOTICE! My health has been on the mend. Still, at times, I get quite tired and dizzy. As such, I will be offering a light schedule this summer.
Sunday, July 5: The Fourth of July in Colorado, 1:30 pm–2:30 pm
Colorado entered the union in 1876 on the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. In a way, its becoming a state caused mass national commotion, especially in that year’s presidential election. The event will feature a free talk about what happened. Included will be looks at Colorado in 1926, and 1976. The lecture will begin at 1:30. Before that, those interested may gather at 1:00 for a very informal potluck. The event will be at the old William Smedley House/Casa Mayan, 1020 Ninth Street Park on the Auraria campus. Enter the campus on Ninth Street at West Colfax Avenue. The road dead ends half-a-block to the northwest at Ninth Street Park. Off to the left is a white frame house, Casa Mayan. The date is subject to change. Check schedules in June to confirm the date. This is a free event.
Saturday, July 11: Denver Streets, 10:00 am–1:00 pm
Here is the event you have requested. Phil Goodstein’s classic, Denver Streets: Names, Numbers, Locations, Logic, is back in print. A completely revised, expanded third edition of the book is out. The 184-page, well-illustrated volume, with a landscape layout, lists for $50.00. Your price during this special event is $40.00, tax paid, cash. Also available, at $50.00 a volume, will be a few copies of the rare, out-of-print first and second editions. The sale will be at a private home at 1330 Monroe Street. (Monroe is four blocks west of Colorado Boulevard.) Mail order for the new edition, postage and tax included, is $60.00 from New Social Publications; Box 18026; Denver 80218.
Tuesday, July 14: South of the Country Club, 6:30 pm–7:30 pm
Meet in front of Steele School on the east side of South Marion Street Parkway between Alameda and Dakota avenues. (Marion Street is one block east of South Downing Street.) It is a free walk where participants may tip the guide as they wish.
Monday, July 20: Denver Streets, 7:15 pm
Here is a chance to hear Goodstein rant and rave about the city’s street system and Denver Streets in a free talk at West Side Books, 3434 West 32nd Avenue, 303–480–0220. This is a book store trying to transition from being the best used book store in town to a place featuring new books. It is about a block to the west of Lowell Boulevard on the south side of West 32nd Avenue. Some of other Goodstein’s books will be available at the event that should last to about 8:00 pm.
Thursday, July 30: Montclair, 6:30 pm–7:30 pm
Gather at the Montclair Civic Building at the southwest corner of Oneida Street and 12th Avenue. (Oneida is four blocks east of Monaco Street Parkway and four blocks west of Quebec Street.) This is another free walk where participants may tip the guide as they wish.
Wednesday, August 5: Park Hill, 11:00 am–noon
Meet at the Park Hill Library at the northeast corner of Montview Boulevard and Dexter Street. (Montview is the equivalent of 20th Avenue. Dexter is seven blocks east of Colorado Boulevard.) This is a free tour sponsored by the Park Hill Library.
Thursday, August 13: Quality Hill, 6:30 pm–7:30 pm
Gather at the benches directly east of the Governors’ Mansion where Pennsylvania Street dead ends to the south of 8th Avenue. (Pennsylvania Street is five blocks east of Broadway. This is another free walk where participants may tip the guide as they wish.
Friday, August 14, 6:00–7:30 pm
Goodstein will speak from 6:15 to about 7:15 about Denver Streets at a free event at the Castle Marne, the historic, stone bed-and-breakfast at 1572 Race Street (the southeast corner of 16th Avenue—Race Street is three blocks west of York Street). Copies of the new book will be available for $50 a volume, tax included.
Sunday, August 23: Mount Nebo Cemetery, 11:00 am–12:30 pm
Hidden in the middle of old Aurora is a traditional Jewish cemetery. Besides the Orthodox, it includes rebels and idealists. This tour shows where the bodies are buried. The entrance to Mount Nebo is at 11701 East 13th Avenue. This is the equivalent of Nome Street. Nome Street, which does not cut south from Colfax Avenue, is two blocks east of Moline Street and four blocks west of Peoria Street. Some benches are north of the entry which is the gathering point of the walk. The stroll will focus on the older, western part of the cemetery. The event is sponsored by the Aurora History Museum. The cost is $15 per person, being free for members of the Museum. Those wishing to make reservations should contact Gregg, Greggcahs@gmail.com.
Please take a moment to check out Phil’s Newest Book Release and Upcoming Book Signings:
New Book Tells the Story of Denver Streets
Phil Goodstein. Denver Streets: Names, Numbers, Locations, Logic. Denver: New Social Publications, 2026. Illustrations, index, bibliography. 11 x 8½ inches. ISBN: 979–8–89971–752–9. viii + 176 pp. $50.00.
There’s a method to their madness. Such is the message of Phil Goodstein’s new book, Denver Streets: Names, Numbers, Locations, Logic. This 184-page coffee table-sized volume is a detailed study of Denver’s street names. In fascinating detail, the author tells how the streets were named and numbered.
In the course of the 19th century, Denver’s streets were a chaotic hodgepodge. Developers, residents, and politicians continually renamed and renumbered the roads. The result was a multitude of short streets whereby nobody was precisely sure how to find his or her way around town. Numerous ordinances were passed labeling and relabeling the city’s roads. When all that changed, how Denver roads have come to be dominated by a series of alphabets, why First Avenue is the first numbered avenue in town, and which streets recall pioneers, are among the many subjects of Denver Streets.
The study of the city’s roads, the author observes, is not only an investigation of the city’s history, but also an excursion into geography, biography, anthropology, and botany. This especially comes out in the chapter on “Today’s Streets.” It lists about 1,000 roads on the Denver grid system. The volume attempts to specify origins of their names and the nature of the different theme alphabets through the metropolis. The book thereupon observes the previous names of current roads.
Particularly valuable is the section “Yesterday’s Streets.” Here the reader discovers that the city once had such roads as Banana Street (Josephine Street), Diamond Avenue (West 27th Avenue), and Tippecanoe Street (South York Street). These lists are invaluable to anyone who has to deal with the city’s past and where previous buildings were located.
Denver Streets is not just limited to Denver. Besides focusing on the roads of the Mile High City, there is a discussion of the past and present names of streets in Arvada, Aurora, Englewood, Edgewater, Thornton, Littleton, Westminster, and the other towns which are part of the greater Denver street grid. A major theme of the volume is that the street system provides unity to the metropolis.
Numerous illustrations highlight Denver Streets. In addition to many maps, the volume includes shots of some of the unusual and diverse street scenes and signs from the city’s past and present. All of this is complemented by a long essay on the evolution of the streets, a discussion of sources, and a detailed index.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, author Phil Goodstein has stood out as the city’s foremost historian. He has churned out a six-volume overview of the community, Denver from the Bottom Up. Additionally, he is the author of a three-volume history of Denver Public Schools. Neighborhoods and cemeteries have been the focus of some of his other volumes. He notes he has been fascinated by the city’s streets since he was a boy when he and his father discussed the road names as they rode around the city. Over the years, Goodstein has also been known for his colorful and unorthodox walking tours of the city.
Long out of print, Denver Streets came out in 1994. A revised edition followed in 1995. Since then, it has become something of a classic for those interested in local history, geography, and genealogy. It is the go-to reference book in trying to trace where yesterday’s streets ran.
This is a completely revised and expanded edition, bringing the street story through the first quarter of the 21st century. There is passing commentary on the names of streets and efforts to change their names. The book has a dig against computer-generated street directions that often are more confusing than helpful. The result is a volume that belongs in the library of anybody interested in learning more about Denver or the way to get around town.
The Hallowed Grounds of Jewish Denver
Phil Goodstein, Denver Jewish Cemeteries. Denver: New Social Publications, 2025. ISBN
979–8–8997175–1–2. vi + 314 pp. Illustrations. Index. $24.95.
Where the Bodies are Buried!
Almost from the foundation of Denver, cemeteries have been part of the city. Their history is as checkered as that of themetropolis as a whole. The community’s first burial grounds, for example, became Cheesman Park, a place where upwards of 2,000 bodies remain.
Denver emerged at the time the romantic garden cemetery was a glowing ideal. A burial grounds was far more than a place for the dead, but a magnificent, well-landscaped park filled with imposing monuments. It was a park in its own right with magnificent trees where the living could commune with the deceased. Making this a Mile High realitywas a challenge given a lack of money and water to transform fields into lushly designed spots of eternal rest.
Click Here for Book Signings Info: The Scenic History of Denver Cemeteries, Vol. 1
Phil Goodstein, The Scenic History of Denver Cemeteries: From Cheesman Park to Riverside. Denver: New Social Publications, 2023. ISBN 978–0–9860748–7–5. vi + 240 pp. Illustrations. Index. $24.95
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Denver is always changing. This is a key point of a new, extremely well-illustrated history of the city, The Denver That Is No More by the city’s leading critic, Phil Goodstein. The highly entertaining, easy-to-read volume highlights the impressive buildings that were once the city’s point of pride, structures which have given way to the community’s questionable sense of “progress.”
From its beginnings during the Pikes Peak gold rush of 1858–59, Denver has had a split personality. Side-by-side with those who have called it their home, the community has attracted fly-by-night investors who have grabbed what they can from the Mile High City before moving on. In the process, in the hope of short-term profits, Denver has wantonly seen the destruction of distinguished buildings.
The Denver That Is No More takes the reader around the city. It highlights the continual transformation of the central business district. Readers are now on Colfax, learning about how the road was once a fine residential boulevard. Next the action is along South Colorado Boulevard, the place where baby-boomers went to play in the 1960s and 1970s. The book visits the old Elitch’s and enters some of the distinguished, but long-disappeared movie palaces. In the process, the study lives up to its claim that by grasping the Denver that is no more, readers can better understand the contemporary city and help plot its future.
Phil Goodstein, The Denver That Is No More: The Story of the City’s Demolished Landmarks. Denver: New Social Publications, 2021. ISBN 0–9860748–8–8/978–0–9860748–8–2. vi + 326 pp. Illustrations. Index. $24.95.
Here are some books Phil recommends for Troubled Times:
Flyer tours busing-1 (1)
The Denver School Book (Denver: New Social Publications, 2019. ISBN 0–9860748–4–5/978–0–9860748–4–4. vi + 490 pp. Illustrations. Index. $24.95) is Phil Goodstein’s latest venture.
It dissects what local schools have been all about. It starts with the city’s first school in 1859, telling about the character of teachers, administrators, and school board members. The study encompasses different schoolhouses, linking them with distinctive neighborhoods. The Denver School Book spells out how the schools have interrelated with the community, and their successes and failures. In passing, it deals with the essential nature of public education and refers to what critics have blasted as “compulsory miseducation.” The extremely well-illustrated Denver School Book is only the beginning of the story. It is the first of a trilogy. The tome ends in 1967, right when DPS was on the verge of school busing upheavals. They will be the subject of volume two, The Denver School Busing Wars. The third part of the study promises to bring the subject into the end of the second decade of the 21st century.
Phil Goodstein, The Denver Civic Center: The Heart of the Mile High City. Denver: New Social Publications, 2016. ISBN 0–9860748–2–9. vi + 478 pp. Illustrations. Index. $24.95.
One hundred years ago, Robert Speer triumphantly returned as mayor of Denver. A prime project was completing the Civic Center. This was an initiative Speer had launched on first taking office in 1904. In the middle of the city, he announced, Denver must have a majestic park. Adjacent to the Capitol, the Civic Center was to be the heart of the Mile High administration and civic life. He encountered numerous roadblocks in making it a reality.
By the time Speer became mayor, Denver had burgeoned as a metropolis with more than 100,000 residents. As it had boomed since the Pikes Peak Gold Rush of 1858–59, newly wealthy individuals advertised their affluence by erecting opulent mansions. Many were in and around what became the Civic Center.
Already in the 1860s, 14th Street had started to emerge as Denver’s address of distinction. Connecting the future Larimer Square with what became the Civic Center, it was where leading bankers, politicians, and members of high society lived. The original home of the University of Denver was at 14th and Arapahoe streets while many medical faceless were nearby. Included was an early home of the University of Colorado School of Medicine at 13th and Welton streets.
The Civic Center proper is in Evans Addition, land pre-empted by Colorado Governor John Evans in 1864 to the south of Colfax Avenue and west of Broadway. In passing, The Denver Civic Center explains why the diagonal street pattern of downtown ends at Colfax and who the street’s namesake, Schuyler Colfax, was.
Land usages rapidly changed during Denver’s first 50 years. As Capitol Hill overwhelmed Evans Addition and 14th Street in the early 20th century as the city’s elite neighborhood, the land near the Civic Center was increasingly an industrial and commercial district. Broadway north of Cherry Creek emerged as the city’s premier site to buy a prestigious new car. Numerous apartments and residential hotels filled the area.
All the while, the Capitol dominates the hill east of Broadway. Its construction and the various monuments in and about it, including in the Civic Center proper, are among the themes of the book. In passing, The Denver Civic Center tells about the tunnel system under the Capitol, complete with the folklore that a couple of floating heads are stashed beneath the seat of the state government.
In the 1970s, the area in and around the Civic Center started emerged as the Golden Triangle. This increasingly became the popular name for the spread encompassed by West Colfax Avenue, Speer Boulevard, and Broadway. Besides being the heart of Denver’s cultural district with the Denver Art Museum and the main branch of the Denver Public Library, it came to be the home of elite residential towers. In passing, the volume notes the Golden Triangle has also been the home of Denver television with the studios of channels 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, and 31 being in and around the section.
The Silver Triangle emerged in the early 1980s as a mirror of the Golden Triangle. Generally, this is the section bordered by West Colfax Avenue to Speer Boulevard to about Champa Street to 15th Street. The Denver Civic Center looks at the landmark buildings there, relating how the Colorado Convention Center emerged and contemporary efforts to transform 14th Street into Ambassador Street