Cherry Creek

The trendy hotels, high end retail chains, and fine dining establishments obscure this neighborhood’s past. If you look close enough, however, traces of its humble beginnings can still be found. It’s a story about a Confederate soldier, one of Denver’s first black communities, and how the town dump became an upscale shopping district. The Cherry Creek neighborhood is bounded by East 6th Avenue to the north, University Boulevard to the west, Colorado Boulevard to the east, and Alameda Avenue to the south. Archaeological evidence has revealed that tribal peoples predating the Cheyenne and the Arapahoe once settled in the area. There’s evidence that maize and amaranth had once been grown there. It also appears to have been a place for cross culture trade, with the discovery of plains style moccasins, yucca-woven sandals, and seashells from either the Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of California.

In 1872, Edwin and Louise Harmon moved from Mississippi to Colorado, purchasing land in what is today the Cherry Creek neighborhood. Edwin was a lawyer and had been a Confederate soldier during the Civil War. The town of Harman was officially founded in 1882, but not entirely incorporated until 1886. Early records show that someone by the name of L.B. Harman was actually the town’s founder, though there are no other records to suggest a person by that name existed in the area. Early land records do show Louise Glover Harman, or “Lou” as she was called, (often recorded as L.G. Harmon in her legal documents), was listed as the property owner. So, Edwin’s wife Louise could very well have been the founding mother of the town bearing their last name. The first school in the area was founded in 1867 and in 1906 it was named after a politician named Henry P.H. Bromwell, who helped write the state constitution and was and advocate of universal education and women’s suffrage. A Town Hall was also built in 1891, in the Italianate style and was designed by architect Franklin E. Kidder. The Town Hall building has gone through several iterations over the years, but surprisingly still exists at 4th & St. Paul and has been renovated into a private residence. After the Silver Crash of 1893, the town of Harman went bankrupt and was eventually annexed by Denver in 1895.

The real estate in the neighborhood wasn’t as coveted in the late 1800s and early 1900s as it is today. First off, Denver’s old city dump site was located just to the south, along the banks of the Cherry Creek and the area was often prone to flooding, since the Cherry Creek Dam wouldn’t be built for another 50 years.

Few people know that the area was actually one of Denver’s first black neighborhoods. Even by the 1920s, when the former town was considered a suburb of Denver, the population was predominantly African American. Things began to change after World War II, however, when the residential building boom occurred and brick bungalows and duplexes began filling the area, making the neighborhood more integrated. By 1950, after the completion of the Cherry Creek Dam made increased development in the area more feasible, ground was broken on the Cherry Creek Shopping Center. Architect Temple Buell designed the first edition of what would become the Cherry Creek Mall, replacing the old town dump site. The rest, as they say, is history.

This content was prepared by local non-profit Historic Denver, Inc., with excerpts from the organization’s Historic Denver Guides series and other research. Historic Denver was founded in 1970 and provides technical assistance to owners of historic properties, conducts research, advocates for preservation, and owns and operates District 10’s own Molly Brown House Museum at 1340 Pennsylvania. For more information, or to get answers to your historic home questions, visit www.historicdenver.org.