Goldsmith

Goldsmith is a small southeast Denver neighborhood, about three-quarters of a square mile, set between I-25 on the west and Quebec Street on the east. Yale Avenue runs along the south edge. Evans Avenue marks the north edge until it bends southeast and becomes Iliff Avenue, which meets Quebec at the northeast corner. Virginia Village is across Evans, and James A. Bible Park is just south across Yale.

Farm ground along an old rail line

This was farmland strung along the railroad that came into Denver from the south, first the Texas and Gulf and later the Colorado and Southern. The High Line Canal and Goldsmith Gulch watered it, and the neighborhood later took the gulch's name. The rail bed still shapes the map: it's the reason Evans swings southeast into Iliff.

The oldest building of note is the Robert Russell Eastern Star Masonic Retirement Home at 2445 S. Quebec St., a 1930 Tudor Revival by architect William Norman Bowman, now mostly hidden behind a 2014 addition.

Denver annexed most of Goldsmith in the early 1960s, starting in 1961 with the 425-acre Evans Avenue annexation. Arapahoe County kept a pocket near I-25 and Yale to protect its tax base, and it's still unincorporated, so near that corner, confirm an address is actually in Denver before you count on city services.

Ranches, bi-levels and curving streets

Denver Assessor open data counts 546 detached houses in Goldsmith, and 99 percent of them were built between 1960 and 1999. The median house is about 1,630 square feet. Two developers set the tone. Franklin Burns platted Eastgate in 1962, and from 1964 to 1972 Monaco Investments filed four plats of Hutchinson Hills, named for Ted Hutchinson, the builder who started University Hills. Brick ranches came first, then bi-levels and split-levels in brick and wood siding. In Hutchinson Hills Filings 10 and 11, carved wooden shutters show up on house after house.

The streets skip the grid. They follow the bends of the canal and the gulch, with T-intersections, round cul-de-sacs, 25-foot setbacks and backyards that get bigger or smaller with each curve. Houses on the streets nearest the water back onto the greenway, mostly behind fences or trees, so if you want trail access off the back of the lot, watch those blocks.

Goldsmith had no designated Denver landmarks or historic districts as of 2020, so exterior projects here don't face landmark design review.

Apartments in the middle, offices along Evans

A band of apartments and condos sits between the houses and the commercial strip on Evans. Two-story fourplexes came first, including a full block of near-identical Colonial Revival ones on South Linden Court from 1964, and bigger complexes followed in the 1970s. That band is where the condos and townhomes are, so budget for HOA dues there.

Evans itself is offices, warehouses and strip centers. At Monaco Parkway and Evans, a Kmart that closed in 2012 was torn down in 2021 for Edera at Highline, a 287-unit apartment project with six three-story buildings made to look like townhomes and an acre of public open space along Monaco.

The canal, the gulch and Bible Park

The High Line Canal loops north into Goldsmith in two hairpin bends. Goldsmith Gulch, an old flood-control channel with a trail beside it, runs up from Bible Park through a brightly painted culvert under Yale and drops underground at Iliff, east of Monaco. Bible Park, at 6802 E. Yale Ave., has parking and restrooms and starts a 3.6-mile stretch of the canal trail on dirt, asphalt and concrete. That stretch crosses Yale twice without signals.

Pizza on Holly, Mexican on Evans

Pantaleone's, at 2120 S. Holly St., has been making New York-style pizza since Pete and Paulette Fafalios opened it in 1985, and Gordon Ramsay gave it a Kitchen Nightmares makeover. La Fogata, at 5670 E. Evans Ave., has been cooking home-style Mexican food from Grandma's recipes since 1990.

I-25 and Yale Station

I-25 runs along the whole west side, with exits at Evans and Yale. Yale Station, at 5315 E. Yale Cir., is on RTD's E and T light rail lines and bus Route 46, and its lot has 129 spaces that are free for the first 24 hours for in-district cars.