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 – September 2024
Talks and Tours by Phil Goodstein
Saturday, July 6: Ghost Walk, 7:00 pm–9:00 pm
Discover tales about the haunting of the Capitol and vintage neighborhood mansions. The walk gathers at the statue of the Indian on the east lawn of the Capitol along Grant Street between Colfax and 14th avenues. The cost is $20. A copy of this schedule is available at LeonardLeonard.com and Liveandlovedenver.com. Private tours are available. Books may be ordered from CapitolHill Books.com, 303–837–0700 or bookelves@westsidebooks.com, 303–480-0220.
Thursday, July 18: North Denver, 6:30 pm–7:30 pm
The event is in the heart of an old ethnic section close to Irish, Italian, and Latino enclaves. It meets at Pecos Plaza, the pocket park at the northeast corner of West 33rd Avenue and Pecos Street. (Pecos is the “P” street west of Broadway and a mile to the east of Federal Boulevard. From the 20th Street Viaduct, go north to Navajo Street for one block and then two blocks west to Pecos. Pecos Plaza is across the street from St. Patrick’s Church.) This is a free walk. Participants may tip the guide as they wish.
Wednesday, July 24: South of the Country Club, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm
Both a middle-class and an elite section is in the area south of the Denver Country Club. The walk gathers in front of Steele School on the east side of the South Marion Street Parkway between Alameda and Dakota avenues. (Marion is one block east of South Downing Street.) The cost is $20 per person.
Wednesday, July 31: Park Hill, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm
Park Hill once styled itself as Denver’s elite neighborhood. Find out if it deserves it. The event meets at Ferguson Park (Turtle Park) at the southeast corner of Dexter Street and 23rd Avenue. (Dexter is seven blocks east of Colorado Boulevard.) The cost is $20 per person.
Tuesday, August 6: Platt Park, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm
Meet in front of the Decker Library at the southwest corner of South Logan Street and Florida Avenue in Platt Park. The cost is $20 per person. (Logan is four blocks east of South Broadway. Florida is four blocks south of Mississippi Avenue and six blocks south of Evans Avenue.)
Wednesday, August 14: Seventh Avenue Parkway, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm
Meet in the median of the Seventh Avenue Parkway on the east side of Josephine Street. (Josephine is one block east of York Street and a mile west of Colorado Boulevard.) This is a free tour. Participants may tip the guide as they wish.
Wednesday, August 21: Quality Hill, 6:00 pm–7:30 pm
Gather at the monument to Colorado governors where Pennsylvania Street dead ends to the south of Eighth Avenue to the east of the Governor’s Mansion. (Pennsylvania is five blocks east of Broadway.) The cost is $20 per person.
Sunday, September 8: Golden Hill, 11:00 am–12:30 pm
A seemingly forgotten traditional Jewish cemetery, Golden Hill, is at the south corner of West Colfax and Union Street. The walk gathers at the gazebo. (Union Street is four blocks west of Simms Street. Turn left right where Wide Acres Road separates from West Colfax. Go in through the gate that is immediately to the left. Make a right and go past the hedge where there is a parking area. The gazebo is adjacent to the parking at the eastern edge of Block 19.) The cost is $20 per person.
Saturday, September 14: Globeville, noon–1:00 pm
Gather by the swimming pool in Argo Park on 47th Avenue between Logan and Pennsylvania streets. (The easiest way to get there is to take Washington Street to 47th Avenue and go west two blocks.) This is a free, experimental tour. Participants may tip the guide as they wish.
Sunday, September 15: Rose Hill, 11:00 am–12:30 pm
Rose Hill, at 62nd Avenue and Oneida Street in the middle of Commerce City, is Denver’s oldest active Jewish burial grounds. The easiest way to get there is to head north on Quebec Street to the north of I-70. Turn left on 62nd Avenue. Go four full blocks east to Oneida Street. The main entry is a block to the west of Oneida Street. The main administration building will be on your right. We gather just to the north of it. The cost is $20.00 per person.
Sunday, September 22: The Ghosts of Cheesman Park, 11:00 am–1:00 pm
The Scenic Denver Cemeteries is out, the history of Cheesman Park when it was a cemetery. Read it and then visit Cheesman Park, seeing that graves remain in place. Meet just past the barricades to the entrance of the park at Ninth Avenue and Race Street. (Race Street is three blocks east of York Street.) The cost is $20.00 per person.
Sunday, September 29: Denver’s Ultimate Cemetery, 11am–4:00 pm
Ideally, Goodstein’s latest book, Fairmount: Denver’s Ultimate Cemetery, will be out in time for the Park Hill Street Fair. His booth will be on the eastern side of the Forest Street Parkway at Montview Boulevard. (Forest is 12 blocks east of Colorado Boulevard. Montview is five blocks north of Colfax and is the equivalent of 20th Avenue.)
Please take a moment to check out Phil’s Newest Book Release and Upcoming Book Signings:
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