The Story Behind the Signs of Park Hill
Badges of the Area Are Brick and Etched In Stone
By Phil Goodstein
In the 1960s, Park Hill was seeking direction and a new identity. Since its beginnings in the late 19th century, residents simply assumed everybody knew where Park Hill was and that it was the finest, most distinguished part of the city.
Many had started to fear for its future by the late 1950s amidst rumblings over integration. To assure that Park Hill was a welcoming community, while newcomers, especially African-Americans, fit in with the upper-middle-class mores of the area, representatives of neighborhood churches forged the Park Hill Action Committee in 1960. The group merged with the Northeast Park Hill Civic Association to form Greater Park Hill Community in 1970.
At the time some people started to call the neighborhood “Dark Hill” a derogatory reference to the numerous black families moving into the section. The Park Hill Action Committee undertook a wide variety of programs to promote the area and argue for tolerance. Among these efforts were house tours and wine-tasting parties. Another idea was to brand the area with highly visible signs declaring the neighborhood was Park Hill.
Occasionally, PHAC worked with the Park Hill Improvement Association, a traditional neighborhood group dating from 1910. The latter emphasized the area’s elite character. At times, it urged transforming Park Hill into a veritable gated village, complete with signs declaring “Park Hill.”
While residents bitterly opposed a proposal to help make this a reality by having city inspectors crack down on any and all code violations, the sign idea percolated.
Meanwhile, Colfax National Bank opened in 1962 at 5901 Colfax Ave. It occupied the complex where his Reed–Fennell Auto had been. A former car dealer, James Fennell, was its founding president. The financial institution sought to reap goodwill by working with the neighborhood, particularly when some of its suggested real estate ventures along Colfax clashed with PHAC’s desire to save all possible housing in the neighborhood.
In June 1967, to assure good relations the bank donated funds leading to the construction of large brick markers at the intersections of 17th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard and Montview Boulevard and Colorado Boulevard reading “Park Hill.”
Dale Vaughn Construction built them with supplies from Denver Brick & Pipe Company. Within a few years, a major financier swindled Colfax National, gravely damaging its finances. Next, it suffered from fraud when a new buyer used a forged certificate of deposit to buy the bank. The result was its disappearance by the 1980s.
By then, the signs had become a Park Hill fixture. There was no specific maintenance budget for them. On occasion, individuals have adopted them, seeing that they are cleaned, and the letters are replaced.
Serving as veritable badges of the areas, they have been outposts serving as the gateways into the neighborhood. They have also inspired other Park Hill signs. Park Hill Elementary School, for example, following the trend of other schools in the city, has an arched “Park Hill” sign by the driveway to its parking lot along Fairfax Street.
Then, in the early 21st century, the city redesigned Martin Luther King Boulevard. Once a simple two-lane road on the edge of the community, early plans had called for landscaping it into a grand parkway comparable to 17th Avenue Parkway.
After pondering transforming the road into a freeway, the city installed some medians as it widened the road into six lanes for traffic coming and going to Stapleton Airport. With the relocation of flight operations to Denver International Airport in 1995, traffic volumes decreased.
About 15 years later, the city removed a lane of traffic on each side of the street for parking and bicycle lanes. While initial suggestions of adding a grand entry arch at Colorado Boulevard never materialized, new landscaping in the early 21st century saw the placing of signs reading “Park Hill” just to the east of Colorado Boulevard and near Poplar Street along Martin Luther King Boulevard.
Etched in stone, they have a somewhat sedate appearance. If nothing else, they have kept residents knowing that they are still in Park Hill as they endlessly drive around the neighborhood.
Phil Goodstein is the author of Park Hill Promise (Denver: New Social Publications, 2012), the comprehensive history of the Greater Park Hill Community. He gives a wide variety of walking tours. Among them, focusing on Park Hill’s neighbor to the south, is a stroll through Montclair on Thursday, August 18, 6–8 p.m. It gathers in front of the Montclair Community Building, 6820 12th Ave. (the southwest corner of 12th Avenue and Oneida Street). The cost is $10.