DURA

[All images from Denver Infill via the Denver Public Library. Click on an image to enlarge]

This picture of downtown Denver from the 30's shows all the low and mid-rise buildings we used to have.

It is sad to think of some of the great buildings that were lost.

Back in the late 60's and 70's, there was a group called DURA [Denver Urban Renewal Authority] that thought of the great idea to mow down entire blocks of buildings to make for the automobile and new super-blocks.

This was the result:





The two above images are of this block as it appears today:



What's weird is that back in the 70's, they wanted to take pedestrian traffic off the streets, up in to a mezzanine of sorts, that connected large plazas by sky-bridges.

[The sky-bridges have since been torn down.]

What is weird about it is that a lot of the buildings from that area did have these plazas incorporated, but now that their connections have been severed, you have these creepy dead end spaces still accessible to the public.

Like the one behind the Xcel Energy building, or in Independence Plaza [above Tokyo Joe's and Paradise Bakery.

Surprisingly not a lot of homeless people set up shop there.

I guess each building's security keeps it's eye on that stuff.

But if you go into those areas today, they're just creepy.

Like some old abandoned post-modern future city.

If you didn't know their back story, one would think all the architects in Denver who built these buildings were off their rockers.

Before it get's cold, I am going to try and collect a library of images before they disappear or get reconfigured for some other use.