City Park

About this property

City Park is an urban park and neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. The park is 330 acres (1.3 km2) and is located in east-central Denver. The park contains the Denver Zoo, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Ferril and Duck Lakes, and a boathouse. City Park is also the name of the neighborhood that contains the park, though the park is the vast majority of the neighborhood. To the immediate north of the park is the City Park Golf Course. City Park is the largest park in Denver. The City Park neighborhood has the same boundaries except for having Colfax Avenue as its southern boundary, which is two blocks south of 17th Avenue. Therefore, the entirety of the neighborhood is only two blocks wide, but about a mile long. The area in the southwest corner of the neighborhood consists of East High School and a green area called the City Park Esplanade, which in some ways extends the park south two blocks to Colfax Avenue. The eastern part of the neighborhood around Colfax Avenue (along with parts of the Congress Park neighborhood across Colfax) is also known as the "Bluebird District", for the Bluebird Theatre located on Colfax and the urban developments around that area. There is also a neighborhood called "City Park West", which is located just west of the park to Downing Street and commonly known as Uptown. It has the same southern and northern borders as City Park, and has York Street as its eastern border. When Denver was founded in 1858, it was little more than a mining camp. By the 1870s however, Denver had gained a substantial permanent population, and many residents were clamoring for parks. In 1878, the Colorado state legislature passed a bill to allow Denver to acquire 1,280 acres (5.2 km2) of state land to build parks. City Park became the largest tract turned into a park. The initial park layout was designed by Henry Meryweather in 1882 in the tradition of both English pastoral gardens and Central Park in New York City with a flowing, casual design. The 1893 World's Fair started the City Beautiful movement, which further developed the design. The park was irrigated with water from the city ditch. City Park is also one of the oldest public spaces in Denver. The park grew out of the social and cultural atmosphere of the late 19th century as Denver residents, business-owners, garden clubs and politicians rallied for the improvement of the dry and dusty Queen City of the Plains. The idea of an “east city park” linked to a “west city park” by a chain of tree-lined parkways first emerged in 1878. In 1882 Henry Meryweather prepared the park's earliest layout and landscape design. His concept followed the precepts of Frederick Law Olmsted, but it was park commissioner Richard Sopris, who managed the park from 1881 to 1891, who is considered the father of the park. Construction of the park began in 1886 with “a sinuous tangle of winding carriageways, walks and promenades” put into place. The arrangement of roads and walks gave the park its pastoral feel, many of which are still in place today.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Denver County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Denver County.

More historic places in Colorado

Browse all historic places in Colorado.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Colorado history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.