Speer

Speer is the official Denver neighborhood bounded by 7th Avenue on the north, Downing Street on the east, Alameda Avenue on the south and Broadway on the west. Capitol Hill sits above it, Baker and Washington Park West are to the west and south, and Country Club is across Downing. Speer Boulevard and Cherry Creek cut through on a diagonal. The part northeast of the boulevard is Alamo Placita, which has its own guide.

Speer Boulevard and Cherry Creek

The boulevard is named for Robert W. Speer, mayor from 1904 to 1912 and again from 1916 to 1918. It went in between 1906 and 1918 along Cherry Creek, part of George Kessler's parkway plan, and S.R. DeBoer filled it with elms, oaks and poplars. Small triangle parks were laid out at the cross streets in 1912. In the mid-1950s the road was widened and split into one-way sides on opposite banks of the creek.

A 1989 restoration added new trees and bike and walking paths separated from traffic, and spillways in the creek make small waterfalls in summer. The boulevard is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Cherry Creek Trail runs northwest along the water to the Confluence in Lower Downtown, so you can bike downtown without riding on a street. Washington Park is an easy walk or ride the other way. Hungarian Freedom Park sits south of the boulevard, across from Alamo Placita Park.

The houses and what is changing

Speer is about 98 percent built, and its buildings run from 30 to 100 years old. Historic bungalows and Victorians stand beside apartment buildings, so single-family and multifamily blocks mix. Capitol Hill to the north is much denser, with mid-rise and high-rise buildings, and the blocks to the west and south are mostly low-rise.

Redevelopment is steady. Older bungalows are being replaced with denser housing, and leftover lots are becoming condos, apartments and mixed-use buildings. If you're eyeing an older house, look at what is going up on the rest of the block before you buy.

Alamo Placita has been a city historic district since 2000. A project on the outside of a house there, whether replacement windows, a new roof, solar panels, a fence, a garage or an ADU, has to clear Landmark Preservation design review once it needs a permit, so build extra time into the schedule.

Sixth Avenue, Broadway and Grant Street

Most of the shops and restaurants line Speer Boulevard, East 6th Avenue, Broadway and Alameda. Little India, at 330 E. 6th Ave., has been a Denver favorite since before 2000. It's open 24 hours, and the lunch buffet, with curries like saag and dal makhani, is the draw.

At 200 Grant Street, the Art Students League of Denver has held classes since 1987 in the 1893 Sherman School, a Richardson Romanesque building with a sandstone base, designed by Henry Dozier.

Getting around

Broadway forms the west edge, and RTD's Route 0 runs on it between Union Station and Englewood Station. Speer Boulevard is the diagonal route northwest toward the Highlands, and the creek trail runs beside it. Sixth Avenue and Alameda run east and west.