Harvey Park and Harvey Park South

Before 1945, Southwest Denver did not exist. That is not to say that there was nothing there, but one’s conception of the area of land now called “Southwest Denver'' was not at all attached to the capital city nine miles to the northeast. Instead, the area between Denver and Littleton was a string of farmlands and pastures connected by dirt roads. This bucolic landscape was punctuated by a military outpost, several luxurious homes, and most prominently, a school for girls with a five-story belfry rising above the rolling hills and pine groves. When the famous Margaret (Molly) Brown built her summer home along the rushing flows of Bear Creek in 1897, she could see for miles. Today, the home is behind a large cinderblock wall at the bustling intersection of Wadsworth Boulevard and Yale Avenue. The Brown home is no longer normative for Southwest Denver; instead, it is a remnant of a time from which the area has moved on. The Mullen Home for Boys, once a sprawling dairy farm and orphanage, is now bordered by Hampden Avenue and housing developments, which are perhaps the most ubiquitous image in Southwest Denver today. Loretto Heights College, once a beacon on a hill that educated Denver’s elite, now hosts a high school and low-income housing. Such vignettes are common in Southwest Denver, a place whose identity is now inextricably tied to the city it is a part of. The Rocky Mountain News foretold this transformation on October 6, 1938: “Slowly, acre by acre, block by block, lot by lot, Denver is creeping westward into Jefferson County. Eventually the entire area between Golden and the Jefferson-Denver County line will be marked off in city blocks and built up with homes. The pace has been gradual during the last 30 years; during the next 30 it will be more rapid.” Nothing more accurate could have been put to paper. 
 

The conclusion of World War II and the return of GIs in droves, now armed with college degrees, high school sweethearts, and infant children, caused a population explosion in Southwest Denver. In fact, the area saw the largest building spree in all of Denver in the 1940s and 1950s. The boom was kicked off by the rapid construction of the Harvey Park suburb on land once owned by Paul Whiteman, one of the US’s greatest band leaders. The neighborhood was begun in 1953 when the one-square-mile piece of property was annexed into Denver from Arapahoe County. Within three years, it housed more than 8,000 residents. This influx of prospective homeowners gave Denver homebuilders increased business; soon, the K.C. Ensor Construction Company, Hutchinson Homes, Carey Construction Company, and others dominated the homebuilding landscape. The next ten years saw the largest development of homes in the area. 

By 1963, there were so many new Southwest Denver suburbs without any electoral history that the Denver Post assigned a reporter to interview residents and get a sense of each suburb’s political leanings. New residents enjoyed a high level of social mobility as they were by and large young, white, and ascendant in a time when economic opportunities were plentiful for people like them. The idea of the “suburb” as a social and economic ideal was ripe within the American consciousness, and these new residents were the beneficiaries of the supposed American Dream. Mid-century modern homes, with their floor-to-ceiling windows, modern appliances, and car-centric infrastructure, were a testament to this new ideal; as such, they were easily found in Harvey Park and other early suburbs. Residents raised children, sent them to burgeoning area schools, attended rapidly expanding churches, and established community and social clubs, all largely within their own neighborhoods. The next era for Southwest Denver, however, would be one when their namesake city became a very real factor in daily life, and the realities of privilege and age would catch up to the area’s residents. 

In reviewing news coverage of Southwest Denver over the years, a definite shift occurs between the 1960s and 1970s. Schools that were once bursting at the seams were now half-full; homes that were once the picture of modernity were now looking somewhat “tired,” and various cracks in the political and demographic world that dominated Southwest Denver suburbs in the middle part of the 20th century were beginning to widen. As Denver continued to expand, the southwestern portion of the city was no longer the suburban frontier. New developments in Jefferson and Arapahoe counties meant that white, wealthier residents could escape further from the urban core and its Black and Hispanic residents, a phenomenon known as “white flight.” At the same time, Denver’s public school system underwent a massive program of racial integration in which students from whiter suburbs were bussed to majority-minority schools, and vice versa. 

The program was vehemently opposed by the majority-white suburban residents, with many of their complaints based upon racial dog-whistles. Others took a somewhat more conciliatory tone, like the residents who took out ads in Northwest Denver newspapers in an attempt to lure Black families to move to Harvey Park and therefore bypass racial integration quotas set by the courts. No matter their actions, the story of Southwest Denver during this time is inextricably tied to privilege, exclusion, and racial bias. To this end, it was also a time of demographic transition. Beginning in the 1980s, a sizable number of Hispanic Denverites moved to Southwest Denver. Today, many Southwest Denver neighborhoods, especially Harvey Park and Harvey Park South, are majority-Hispanic. Since the 2010s, these neighborhoods have also seen a marked increase in home values as Denver’s real estate scene continues to become more expensive. These factors, along with many more, shape the Southwest Denver of today. 

Much of Harvey Park was once part of the Black and White Ranch, a 160-acre plot purchased and developed by the renowned jazz musician Paul Whiteman as a retirement property for his parents. After his mother’s death, Whiteman’s father moved back to Denver and the property passed through the hands of several owners, each less interested in maintaining an active ranch. It was then sold to Major George Harvey, a Texas oilman who sold the property for a profit to Aksel Neilsen of the Mortgage Investments Company. The developers planned a new community of 1,662 homes on the land, save for the two-acre plot that Major Harvey retained around his residence. 

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, about 4,000 homes were built in the neighborhood, most of which were constructed on land owned by the Mortgage Investments Company. The eastern portion of the neighborhood past Lowell Blvd was developed by the D.C. Burns Realty Company between 1946 and 1949, consisting of small homes for veterans returning from World War II. Known as the Burns-Brentwood subdivision, its developers also left space for the Brentwood Shopping Center, Abraham Lincoln High School, and All Saints Catholic Church. 

Harvey Park was annexed into Denver in 1954. Early residents moved into their new homes around that same year to find dirt roads, no telephone service, and no streetlights. That winter, cars traveling on the roads formed ruts so deep that several had to be fished out. Flash floods and droughts stymied early attempts to make Harvey Park a proper neighborhood, but by the end of the decade the area had become somewhat more “civilized.” Most early residents were college-educated veterans of World War II who found inexpensive places to settle with their wives and children. Many of these residents were, according to an April 1965 commemorative issue of the Southwest Denver Herald Dispatch, “long on prospects but short on cash.” The article describes in great detail the social mobility of such young couples, who 10 years later occupied the same home but might also have had “a ski home in the mountains or a summer cabin, and possibly a country club membership.” Additionally, Harvey Park has long been known for its mid-century modern home designs. Harvey Park has homes designed by Cliff May, the architect responsible for creating the idea of the postwar “dream home” embodied in many neighborhood residences. These often included detached garages, clerestory and floor-length windows, and courtyards. 
 

Similar to other Denver neighborhoods constructed around the same time, Harvey Park began to undergo a demographic transition in the 1980s. In 1981, 40 white parents in Harvey Park who opposed Denver's busing plan placed an advertisement in the Denver Weekly News attempting to lure Black families to the neighborhood, in an apparent attempt to meet racial quotas and to obviate the need for busing. The Weekly News, a northwest Denver newspaper which carried the advertisement, had an almost exclusively Black readership. However, Harvey Park’s eventual demographic transition largely involved an increase in the Hispanic population. Today, younger Hispanic residents and older white residents live alongside one another; according to 2017 data from the Piton Foundation, 60.13% of the neighborhood identifies as Latino, up about 10% from the turn of the century. Several homes have been renovated by newcomers, and property values have increased in recent years. Harvey Park continues to provide a home base to Denver’s families.  

The famous jazz musician Paul Whiteman built this home on the old Black and White Ranch for his parents. His father, Wilberforce, was a music director for area high schools who always dreamed of owning a farm. His son’s largesse made that possible. Whiteman had the home built close to the property’s 13-acre lake as the farm’s crown jewel. The home began as a two-story Dutch colonial, but after it was sold to Henri deCompiegne in 1936, it was converted into a French-style residence of more than 5,000 square feet - more than double its original size. The home now included a spacious dining room, a butlers’ pantry, several living and family rooms, and seven bedrooms. deCompeigne sold the property to Frederick W. Bonfils, the business manager of the Denver Post, in 1946. In 1948, Texas oilman Major Arthur Harvey purchased the home and its surrounding 320 acres. Harvey rarely spent time at the home, and was not particularly engaged in the area’s social scene. Harvey sold his land to developers in the early 1950s, as ranches like Harvey’s became fewer and farther between. However, he withheld two acres of property surrounding the house from development, residing there until 1962. Bill Allison, the president of a successful drilling company, bought the house in 1962. Since the Allison purchase, the property has largely remained the same. In May of 2023, Allison listed the property for sale once more. 

In 1950, Archbishop Urban Vehr bought five acres of land bordering Federal Blvd to establish a parish for the 220-odd Catholics living in Harvey Park. Fr. John Harley Schmitt was assigned as pastor, and early masses were held at Loretto Heights College. By August of 1951, a church had been built and dedicated. However, on January 8, 1953, the structure burned to the ground after an accident involving votive candles. Called “the worst fire in Denver Catholic history” by the Denver Catholic Register, the incident attracted the attention of Pope Pius XII, who sent a blessed piece of mortar for the construction of a new church. Dedicated in 1954, the second church served the community until 1967 when the growing parish was in need of a larger building. Dedicated on Thanksgiving Day of 1968 by Archbishop James Casey, the new structure seats 1,100 people and is emblazoned with a 30-foot outdoor mosaic of Jesus visible to motorists on Federal Blvd. The congregation, once made up of white World War II veterans and their families, is now largely of Latino and Hmong descent. 

Harvey Park is notable for its concentration of private lakes hidden from public view and forbidden from communal use. The two largest are Wolcott Lake and Riviera Lake, located respectively in the southern and northern portions of Harvey Park. Both began as irrigation lakes for area farms and ranches, and as development ensued in the 1950s, larger homes were built around their shores. Wolcott Lake was originally a mud hole surrounded by weeds; however, the charter members of the Lakeridge Association drained the lake, sealed it, added a beach and perimeter gravel walk, and later added a boat pier so that sailboats could use the lake. Later additions included a playground, shade trees, a pavilion, and increased parking. As of 2023, annual membership dues for the private association are $1,000. To the north, Riviera Lake is surrounded by custom homes built in the 1950s by contractor Lou Carey. Early residents established the Riviera Circle Lake Club, which sponsors boat parades, waterski competitions, and a fireworks show for its members. The lake is stocked with bluegill and perch fish which members can fish for.

Harvey Park’s burgeoning postwar population quickly gave way to a school-age population in need of education. In short order, Doull Elementary was opened in 1956, followed by Sabin Elementary in Harvey Park South and Denison Elementary just north of Harvey Park at the corner of Sheridan Ave and Jewell Blvd. Each school was enlarged in the years leading up to 1965 thanks to a large number of students. Neighborhood public elementary schools only educated a portion of the neighborhood’s students; All Saints Parish School was staffed by the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood and operated to serve the parish’s 1st-8th grade students from 1959 to 1978. Abraham Lincoln High School was founded in 1959, and by 1965 it had the largest junior class west of the Mississippi, a testament to the increasing populations in the area. Lincoln’s traditional rival, John F. Kennedy High School in Bear Valley, has a nearly identical building layout. As of 2021, Lincoln High has 964 students, 89.9% of whom identify as Latino. 

At the turn of the 20th century, Harvey Park South looked nothing like it does today. A surveyor looking south from central Denver would see a landscape of pastures dotted with farmhouses, save for a grouping of stately buildings overlooking Fort Logan. This cluster, framed by a redstone belfry rising high above the building’s five stories, belonged to Loretto Academy, a school for girls established in 1891. Far away from the hustle and bustle of Denver, the Sisters of Loretto purchased their 45 hilltop acres and began construction on the academy during the winter of 1890. 

The school only had one building until the construction of a dormitory, named Pancratia Hall for the intrepid mother superior who purchased the land for the college, in 1930. In 1958, the parcel was annexed into the City of Denver to the joy of the sisters, who had relied on self-built infrastructure for years. To the west of Loretto Heights was the Fair Hill Farm, owned by prominent Denverite John Flower, the son-in-law of philanthropist J.K. Mullen. Fair Hill had a large barn of riding horses, cows, sheep, ducks, and geese. After the Second World War, upkeep problems plagued the farm as Denver crept closer and closer. The farm’s last owner, Herbert Stebbens, sold the property to Loretto Heights who promptly sold parcels to developers and the City of Denver; Loretto Heights Public Park now takes up some of the old Fair Hill Farm.

Around the time of the area’s annexation, farmland to the west of Loretto Heights began to give way to subdivisions. Similar to Harvey Park, developers cordoned off streets and built inexpensive homes to house veterans and their families. Many home purchases were financed with loans made possible by the GI Bill. A small development immediately north of Loretto Heights was constructed in the early 1950s and given the name of Sharon Park. Soon after, the area west of the college was developed. Harvey Park South’s streets followed a radial design, emanating westward from the Loretto Heights property. Larger streets like Bates and Dartmouth Avenues handled traffic while homes were built on cross-streets. In the 1950s and 1960s, the sheer number of children in 

Harvey Park South outpaced the capacity of local elementary schools. As such, these children attended split sessions for most of their childhoods. Sabin Elementary School, built in 1958, added rooms in 1960 and again in 1962. Kunsmiller Junior High School was built in 1957 and expanded in 1963. Abraham Lincoln High School, built in 1960, only stopped offering split sessions when Kennedy High School in Bear Valley alleviated the situation six years later. Additionally, some students were bussed to Horace Mann Junior High School in North Denver to meet racial integration quotas. However, by 1977, area elementary schools were running at about half capacity, a sign of fewer births and an aging neighborhood.

A natural result of Harvey Park South’s car-centric design was the construction of the Bear Valley Shopping Center in the neighborhood’s southwest corner. Opening on April 1, 1958, the strip mall hosted supermarkets, variety stores, and big-box clothing stores. By 1994, the mall had lost most large-scale tenants and was in need of a major redevelopment. King Soopers and Home Depot relocated to the shopping center in short order, and it continues today as a bustling commercial area at the corner of Hampden and Sheridan Boulevards. There are also 400 multi-family dwellings constructed after 1970 near the neighborhood’s eastern edge. Evidence of more multi-family units began appearing in 1976, mainly on vacant land to the east. In the 1970s, many Harvey Park South residents vehemently opposed plans to develop land owned by Loretto Heights into multi-family housing. Articles and neighborhood documents from the time show that the residents were fearful of increases in density and traffic, as well as concerns that the development would obstruct their panoramic views. 

The growth of Harvey Park South mirrors the rest of Southwest Denver, especially its eponymous neighbor to the north. All but a small section of Harvey Park South was annexed into Denver from 1950 to 1960, and total annexation was achieved by 1973. However, the neighborhood had been almost entirely developed by 1960. However, large parcels of land, totalling around 100 acres, remain undeveloped as of 2023. Between 1960 and 1970, the minority population almost doubled from 3% to 5.8% but was still far below the citywide average of 27.7% in 1970. In the coming decades, the minority population in Harvey Park South has increased exponentially; as of 2016, the Latino contingent of the neighborhood forms a slight majority with 50.08% of residents identifying as such. The neighborhood also shows increased numbers of those under 18 and over 65, a likely sign of the transition between original owners and their newer, younger counterparts. 
 

The Sisters of Loretto have a long and storied history in Colorado. A small band of sisters came west from their Kentucky motherhouse in 1864, originally opening the Saint Mary’s School for Girls. Overcrowding soon led the sisters’ charismatic leader, Mother Pancratia Bonfils, to locate and purchase a 40-acre plot of land in Sheridan Heights for the purposes of expansion. The intention of such a purchase was to relieve pressure on Saint Mary’s by creating a separate boarding school for girls. Plans were soon drawn up, and the impressive five-story structure, built by noted Denver architect F. E. Edbrooke out of red sandstone hauled from Manitou Springs, was dedicated on December 10, 1891. The building was meant to house all of the college’s early operations. To this end, it included classrooms, dormitories, lecture and exhibition halls, kitchens, sisters’ quarters, and most notably, a 100-foot belfry complete with an observation deck. A chapel building connected to the main hall was completed in 1911, featuring stained glass from the renowned Myer firm of Munich, Germany. Both buildings have since been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Mother Pancratia, the school’s intrepid founder, died in 1915 and is buried on the site. Pancratia Hall, named in her honor, was constructed to the north of the main building as a classroom and dormitory building in 1930. College classes were added to the constantly-growing Loretto Academy in 1918, and the high school closed in 1941 as the number of college students had outpaced secondary enrollment. The 1940s and 1950s were a time of great growth for the college. A student union, center for the performing arts, library, and dormitories were all opened in a 20-year period, and the 1960s saw the construction of a swimming pool and a small biology laboratory. During these years, Loretto Heights became known as a safe place for upper-class women to be educated, and many of Denver’s elite Catholic families sent their daughters to the school. 

The college’s transformation in the late 1960s and early 1970s was largely a result of the reforms instituted by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. As part of the Catholic Church’s new mission to be open and receptive to the world around it, Loretto Heights entered a stage of reevaluation. Emblematic of this shift was the presidency of Sister Patricia Jean “PJ” Manion, who assumed the office in 1967. Manion was a far cry from the black-habited sisters of old, shedding her veil alongside any notion that Loretto Heights was closed off from the larger City of Denver. Under her leadership, governance of Loretto Heights was transferred to a lay board of trustees, the Sisters of Loretto were given a salary to teach just like all other faculty members, and the curriculum was transformed to be more dynamic and experimental. This transformation was summed up by Sister Manion best: “[Loretto Heights] isn’t going to be an ivory tower any longer. It’s a complex, changing, confusing world and students must be educated to meet the challenge of the future.” During Manion’s tenure, Loretto Heights opened its doors to men in 1970 and began offering degree programs for nontraditional college students.

Like many other small institutions of higher education, Loretto Heights began to experience dire financial concerns in the 1980s as enrollment dropped and expenses skyrocketed. Eventually, the college transferred its most successful programs, nursing and dance, to Regis University in Northwest Denver. Loretto Heights officially closed in 1988. Within two years, Regis University had sold the Loretto Heights campus to the Teikyo University Group, a conglomerate focusing on the needs of nontraditional students, in a move many alumnae and Sisters of Loretto viewed as a betrayal. In 2009, the institution changed its name to Colorado Heights University which continued in its same role until closure in 2016. The Teikyo University Group listed the campus for sale, and the area fell into disrepair until a developer bought the site in 2018. Neighborhood concerns about the campus’s future led the City of Denver to develop the Loretto Heights Area Plan, a multifaceted and comprehensive vision document for the former college that included community stakeholders, developers, and representatives of the Sisters of Loretto. In May of 2022, the concrete results of such exhaustive planning were beginning to be realized, as a renovated Pancratia Hall opened to low-income renters. Redevelopment continues on the site as of July 2023, with new roads and curbs being built. 

The existences of the Chalmers-Hadley Branch Library in Harvey Park and the Bear Valley Branch Library in Harvey Park South are inextricably linked to that of the Harvey Park Improvement Association (HIPA). Founded in 1956 during the height of growth in Harvey Park and Harvey Park South, HIPA was a vehicle for residents to advocate for their neighborhood on a city-wide level. For more than five years, citizens used HIPA to organize their advocacy for a branch library in the Harvey Park area. They gathered 14,000 signatures in one week, jammed city phone lines calling to support the establishment of a library, and filled the city council chambers whenever the issue came to a vote. It took about eight years before the city relented, opening the Chalmers-Hadley Branch Library at the corner of Federal Blvd and Jewell Ave in June of 1964. Harvey Park South residents continued to push for their own library, and the Bear Valley Branch Library was opened to the public in 1971. The building is architecturally significant for its turn-of-the-decade concrete style, complete with oblong windows and rounded forms. 

About Us - All Saints Catholic Parish 

Denver Public Library Neighborhood Clippings Archive

Denver’s Single-Family Homes by Decade: 1970s – DenverUrbanism Blog 

“Farmlands, forts, and country life: the story of southwest denver” by Sharon Catlett, resident of Harvey Park

Harvey Park Neighborhood Demographics as of 2017 (Denver metro data) 

Harvey Park South Neighborhood Demographics as of 2017 (Denver metro data)

Historic Denver Building Transformed into Affordable Housing - Opencities 

January 1977 Harvey Park South Neighborhood Plan (DPL Harvey Park South Newspaper Clippings File)