Then and Now

In 2010 as I wandered around the Commons Park area I came across the following perspective of the skyline of Denver.

This was taken from north of 20th looking across the Union Station area. Just like many others in the Then and Now series it has changed over time to what it looks like today, ten years later.

While the long grasses which mimic the buildings still exist in this area, there is another layer of growth between the then and now of the two scenes.

Between the two images you can place two of the same buildings i the scene. The first is to the left of the frame which is 1999 Broadway (built in 1985), and in the now is covered up just a bit so you only see the upper portion of the building. The second is in the middle of both images which is 1225 17th Street and was built in 1982.

In 2012 I found myself walking across one of the newer pedestrian bridges from the Commons Park area of Denver towards Union Station. This bridge crosses the three mainline railroad tracks which run north and south along the front range as well as some light rail lines for RTD.

On this morning you could see the buildings in the distance of downtown Denver and the cranes for the start of the revitalization of Union Station and the bus depot area.

With the majority of the build-out of the Union Station area now complete I revisited this area eight years later (October 2020) to see the change which has taken place.

There have been quite a few buildings built over the past few years in the Union Station area which provides a perspective much different now. Where the cranes were in the original image is about 1/4 mile away from this vantage point and there are 4 buildings between this spot. The immediate building are The Grand Apartments, followed by two towers of Union Denver and finally one of the newest additions The Coloradan. The transformation over eight years is quite amazing and the majority of these buildings have gone up in just the past few years.

It has been a few years since I last headed out to Sloans Lake to capture sunrise, thus I thought this would be a great opportunity to revisit this location for the Then and Now project.

Over the course of the summer and fall of 2012 I visited Sloans Lake quite a few times to capture the sunrise over the city. Living close to a location allows you to revisit a place under different atmospheric conditions as well as direction of light telling many stories about one spot.

The 2012 reference images during the predawn light gives a nice background to the city and also the share of the skyline then.

Eight years later I went to capture the scene at Sloans Lake once again. When I initially thought about revisiting the location it was with the intent of photographing the rising sun over the city of Denver. Upon arriving to the location the clouds were covering the city which changed those plans. However, in the matter of a few minutes the clouds started to show the colors of the sun before sunrise.

From the image itself the one noticeable change is the addition of 1144 15th Street or the Optiv Building. This building is right next to the Four Seasons, but from this perspective there appears to be more of a distance between the two based on the diagonal grid of downtown Denver. A lesser noticeable change is Block 162 which is located in the Central Business District. With Block 162 right next to the Hyatt Regency near it is enclosed by other buildings and while it will be viewable from some of the skyline images it will not be as prevalent as 1144 15th Street given the location and lower height.

 

For five years I had gallery nrc which was located on the 4400 block of Tennyson Street in Northwest Denver. In 2011 when we upgraded the sign on the building, I captured this image looking north on Tennyson Street. On the right of the image is Metro Frame Works followed by Tenn Street Coffee next door, this was a typical spring day along Tennyson. The area which we will focus on today in our Then and Now series is looking north along the street.

Earlier this month on a Sunday morning I visited Tennyson Street and took the following photo from the driveway of the former gallery building. To put it in perspective from the Then image, I am about 30 feet north and standing a little in the street.

While it doesn’t exactly match the initial reference photo there is still enough to give a context of the change along this block in a short period of time. Almost all of the old houses on this block have been scrapped and replaced with multi-tenant townhomes.

When I closed the gallery in 2014 I could sense the change which was coming in the area and thought it would take around five to ten years, it did come much sooner. The Tennyson Street area had been “found” and the streetscape project in 2011 contributed, but it was also the ability to find a better value about a little more than a mile away from Highland Square and a ten minute drive to downtown Denver. Property owners who in some instances lived in the neighborhood for decades were willing to take the money being offered by developers and move elsewhere.

There is definitely a debate on how this change has impacted the small business owners who were formally in the area. I have seen some of the older businesses move elsewhere and new businesses come and go. However, quite a few of the established businesses have flourished as well as new ones to the area. This did not all happen overnight, and as I mentioned even when I had the gallery I was starting to see this change in the area and also the context of First Friday Art Walk on Tennyson.

Even though it is not in the image from this month, the sign remains on the gallery building with just the website we used for marketing all of our art galleries in the building painted over at this time. Not all of the businesses there are galleries, however five small businesses still exist in the building and contribute to the local economy.

Around ten years ago I captured this shadow of a tree as I walked through the Golden Triangle area of Denver.

This image, Shadow of a Tree, told a story of emptiness along the side of this building which the long shadow of this tree appeared on in the afternoon light.

A lot has changed in the Golden Triangle of Denver. While other areas led in the redevelopment and new construction the Golden Triangle was a little behind, however that has changed in recent years. Taller building are sprouting up in the area based on the allowable zoning and has part of those efforts this building showing the shadow no longer exists.

When I revisited the location on a summer morning I knew the building was gone but wasn’t sure if new construction had started. The building which was there housed offices for Denver Health which were moved to new construction closer to the facility on the other side of Speer and Cherry Creek.

In this image the concrete line between the two standing construction barricades is what was in the center of the original frame. The tree which cast the shadow is cover with metal in the lower right.

The construction is the distance is a 17 story residential building along Acoma Street. This parcel is slated for residential units as well with a 14 story structure.

This is probably one of the more noticeable changes I have come across since I started the Then and Now project.

In the summer of 2012 I took this image of the Dancers at the Denver Performing Arts Center (DPCA). Using the shrubs along Speer for the foreground I liked having nature profound in the image as it led into the city.

Returning to the same spot seven years later shows a couple of changes in the Denver skyline.

The most noticeable change in the skyline is the 1144 15th building which is behind the Four Season in this image. Additionally the 1401 Lawrence building (Polsinelli Building) can be seen through the Dancers from this view. The main reason there is not a lot of growth shown in this image is the direction in which it was taken. There are height restrictions in the Lower Downtown area of Denver which is beyond the DPCA in this image and the Union Station area is too far in this distance with this perspective. If I had taken the initial image a little more to the right, the dynamic of the skyline change would be more profound.

I first noticed this image when I would drive home from gallery nrc, my gallery which was located in Northwest Denver. During the shorter days, around dusk and into the evening hours, where I would notice the Davita Building and how it brought in Millennium Bridge as a design element from this perspective.

Over the years I would return to this location looking for new perspectives to capture the scene. In 2013, I took this image which starts to show the changes taking place in this area of Denver.

The area behind Millennium Bridge had started already to fill in with new construction in the Union Station area. Also in the foreground of the bridge is a crane for other development taking shape in the area.

Fast forward to August 2019 and it definitely is a different scene.

The area on the far side of Millennium Bridge has filled in with a second building. The building was completed in 2018 and is branded with Davita, however they only have space in part of the building with other companies filling the remainder of the 16 Chestnut building.

What you don’t see behind are the additional buildings which have grown in the Union Station area redevelopment. While the negative or open space from the original image taken not even ten years ago is gone, the reflection which now exists can make for interesting images in the future.

When I was walking down Speer in 2011 a motorist stopped at a red light mentioned the reflection of the skyline from this building on the Auraria Campus. I ended up walking further down to capture a different reflection of the city and frame it with the window frame of the building.

 

In 2019 I went back to capture the same image. For the most part it is the same with two elements which are different.

The first being one of the newest buildings on the Denver skyline. 1144 15th Street is just to the left of the Four Seasons building on the far right of the image. The other is the growth of the tree over the past eight years in the bottom of the reflection.

With many established buildings in this area of downtown I don’t expect the reflection to change much, however you never know what will happen in terms of development in the next ten years.