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
March – May 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
CANCELLED | Sunday, March 15: Cheesman Park, 11:00–12:30 pm
There are more than 2,000 bodies in Cheesman Park. How did they get there? What is the story about the mansion adjacent to the park that inspired the horror classic The Changeling? Why did the city name the park for Walter Scott Cheesman who was once the city’s biggest drug dealer? These questions were once answered in a two-hour stroll around the park. This is an experimental tour to see if they can be fit into a 90-minute walk. It is a free event where participants are encouraged to tip the guide as they see fit. The walk gathers just inside the park at the entrance on Ninth Avenue at Race Street. (Race is three blocks west of York Street. Usually there is plenty of free street parking just east of the park on Ninth Avenue and Race Street.)
Thursday, March 19: Aurora Deadbeats, 6:00–7:00 pm
How is it that there is an abandoned cemetery in the middle of a modern Aurora shopping center? What is the tale of a different burial spot, Mount Nebo, that is just off of Colfax Avenue near Nome Street? How does Fairmount Cemetery connect with Aurora? For that matter, where and what is St. Simeon Cemetery? These queries will be the crux of a lecture on Aurora cemeteries at the Aurora History Museum, 15051 Alameda Parkway on the Aurora Municipal Center campus near the library and police headquarters. The $5.00 fee includes admission to the museum.
Wednesday, April 1: The Sunnyside of Denver, 6:00–7:15 pm
Tour guide and historian Phil Goodstein is known as a cynic and a naysayer. On this tour, for April Fool’s Day, he will focus on the bright side of Denver with a walk in the Sunnyside neighborhood. It gathers by the picnic table near the fenced-off bed of steel flowers in Chaffee Park on the east side of Tejon Street between West 43rd and West 44th avenues. It is a free walk where participants may tip the guide as they wish.
Saturday, April 11: The Centennial of South High School, 1:30–2:00 pm.
One hundred years ago, South High occupied its marvelous Italian renaissance home. As part of an open house/celebration of the event, Goodstein will be giving a free lecture on the history of the school and South Denver. South High is at the southeast corner of South Gilpin Street and Louisiana Avenue. Enter the parking lot along South Franklin Street to the south of Louisiana Avenue, the road which is the southern border of Washington Park. The lecture is part of a series of events from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm in and around the school.
Sunday, April 12: Emanuel Cemetery, 11:00 am–12:30 pm
Emanuel Cemetery is the Jewish section of Fairmount. Enter at the main gate to Fairmount at 430 South Quebec Street. Go through the main parking lot and up the hill by the Gothic Little Ivy Chapel. Just past it and the adjacent parking lot, turn right on the main road. Go about three blocks south to where there are benches and a sign on the right declaring “Emanuel Cemetery.” The walk will feature newer parts of the burial ground. The cost is $20 per person.
Sunday, April 26: Mount Nebo, 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 cost is $20 per person.
Sunday, May 3: 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. An alternate route is to take Simms Street to West 14th Avenue and go four blocks east where the road runs into the cemetery. Turn left and the main entry to the cemetery is on the left. Once in the cemetery, 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 18.) The cost is $20 per person.
Sunday, May 17: Rose Hill Cemetery, 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.
Please take a moment to check out Phil’s Newest Book Release and Upcoming Book Signings:
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