Denver's LoDo: clubs, shops, bars and more
If Sports Illustrated is right, Denver’s lively LoDo (Lower Downtown) is the favorite downtown of National Hockey League players — and probably not just because one of America’s best bookstores, the Tattered Cover, has a store here. With a high concentration of clubs, restaurants, bars, art galleries and shops, anchored by Coors Field and the Pepsi Center, there’s a lot more to do in Denver’s hip, showcase neighborhood than just browsing books.
Today renovated hotels and old brick warehouses converted to pricey new lofts line the neighborhood. Two hundred years ago, though, teepees dotted the prairie along the South Platte River where the Arapahoe tribe made camp.
In 1858, when gold was discovered in the sands along the river, settlers in covered wagons pushed the Indians off this prime piece of real estate and began building Denver’s oldest and original settlement. LoDo quickly became a wild district known for its brothels and saloons. After the Sand Creek Massacre, an 1864 attack on a village of
Cheyenne and Arapaho, some of the settlers paraded the heads and scalps of the slaughtered Arapahoe in the Apollo Theater and nearby saloons.
Denver worked hard to put that gruesome history in the past. The Lower Downtown area grew into a thriving business district. Then, like a lot of urban areas in America, it decayed. By the middle of last century, it had become a skid row full of flea-infested flophouse. The original Beats, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, drank cheap wine and wrote poetry there.
The renaissance came in the 1990s. Future mayor John Hickenlooper established the Wynkoop Brewery, and many other business people and investors transformed LoDo into a destination neighborhood.
You don’t have to know all that, of course, to spend the day shopping for fine jewelry in Larimer Square and then wandering down to Wazee Street’s Robischon Gallery to buy a painting for your house.
Or maybe you'd rather have a drink at the bar of the famous Oxford Hotel or pay a visit to the historic Union Station. If you happen to be a sports lover, you can just join those hockey players — and thousands of others — in hanging out in one of many great sports bars and having a great time.
- by David Zindell, Denver Reporter for HelloMetro
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