Neighborhood Profile: Harvey Park South Harvey Park South History: Forty-five acres of the Harvey Park South area were first purchased in 1890 for the St. Mary’s Academy. The Catholic girls’ school was run by the Sisters of Loretto and had outgrown its previous location. The school was a five-story, 186 room, Romanesque-style Building. The Sisters…

Neighborhood Profile: Central Park Central Park History: Central Park, (formerly Stapleton) located seven miles outside of downtown Denver, was originally known as Sand Creek or Rattlesnake Hollow. In the early 1920s, the aviation industry was steadily growing in Denver. Mayor Benjamin Stapleton wanted to build a local airport to centralize this growth. The mayor secured…

Neighborhood Profile: Athmar Park Athmar Park History: Athmar Park originally started out as a few independent parcels. The northeast portion was rural farmland at the turn of the 20th century. A majority of those farms were wheat fields and celery farms. The eastern border was once part of what is now the Valverde neighborhood. And…

Neighborhood Profile: Whittier Whittier History: The Whittier neighborhood was one of the first neighborhoods to extend beyond the bounds of Denver’s original Congressional Grant. The neighborhood was named after a local school. The school was named in honor of the nineteenth-century abolitionist poet, John Greenleaf Whittier. Whittier wrote about the injustices of slavery and questioned the hypocrisy of a…