A Whittier Walking Tour

                                    Through this broad street, restless ever,

                                    Ebbs and flows a human tide,

                                    Wave on wave a living river,

                                    Wealth and fashion side by side;

                                    Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.           

                                                                        —John Greenleaf Whittier                       

Denver’s Whittier Neighborhood is bounded by 23^rd  Avenue on the south, MLK on the north, York to Downing east to west. Manual High School and adjacent Fuller Park sit near its center. My customary walk is a lopsided oval around the school. First I hike upslope to 26^th and Williams, a high point. The intersection profits from the expanse of Manual parking lots and playing fields, allowing an unobstructed western view. Today, the foothills were ultramarine and indigo. Beyond them the high country shimmered white. Anchoring the northern edge of the Front Range, Long’s Peak made its height felt, more than seventy miles distant. Half its rocky peaks were swept bare of snow, a sign of our shortage. Standing there, I feel the rolling prairie beneath me, imagine how it looked, treeless and open, before we came, slow waves of sage-pocked land uncurling forever.

Traffic’s steady on 26^th Avenue, a route to downtown. Frank’s Kitchen looked busy, two blocks east, my source of tasty, freshly made meals. A block south, KJ’s Coffee Shop on 25^th is an impromptu office peopled with laptops. The clientele for both are mainly afoot, often with dog and baby stroller. Frank’s and KJ’s are recent improvements: for most of my years here we had nothing like them within walking distance.

I go south to 24th and then east for several blocks. Standing in the middle of the street at Race (I do so easily; there’s no traffic) I’m on the wide crest of a hill downsloping westward. From here the mountains rise above downtown’s skyline, Mt. Evans satisfyingly framed. In 1874, an advertisement for this area described it as “beautifully located, overlooking the city with a glorious view of the mountains.”

Looking west from such high points, the descent is gradual, leaving the length of 24^th Avenue visible from Vine to the end of the neighborhood and the traffic light at Downing. The light, at that moment, was green. A long view down a street has always moved me, as though it were a sign that eventually we’ll find our way.

Most Whittier housing was built from the late 1880s to the 1920s. On my walk I pass Craftsman bungalows, Tudors, Dutch Colonials, Queen Annes and Denver Squares, red brick, blond brick, houses that have stood over a hundred years, rich with history. There’s a wraparound porch I like on 23^rd and Race, and on High, a south-facing yard whose fence bursts with blue morning glories in August.

Twenty-third is a busy crosstown artery, so I return north to 25^th, where the world is quiet, then west to Lafayette. Here the downslope flattens. The Front Range is still visible, but downtown blocks Mt. Evans. I’ve always resented those skyscrapers. There were less of them when I came here and I had better views.

In the 1920s, African-Americans began moving into the area, starting Whittier’s first turning, from white middle/working class to African-American middle/working class. It took thirty years, but by 1950, Whittier was 90% black. A color line ran down the alley between Race and High in the 1920s and African-Americans could not buy east of it. Well, they could, but when they did, the KKK bombed their houses. Another line cordoned the neighborhood at 23rd. Red-lining was an effective way to create ghettos: north-south and east-west demarcations forced African-Americans into limited areas. That the neighborhood was named for American poet John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 – 1892) was fitting. Popular in his time, his reputation as a poet has faded, but Whittier was an avid abolitionist, worked thirty years to end slavery.

On Lafayette, I walk north, passing a block of handsome two-story homes lined with tall old silver maples. Hundreds of silver maples planted in Whittier a century ago are ending their lives. In scattered efforts, they’re being replaced with lindens, swamp oaks, Norway maples and a dozen others. In a Whittier tree planting with Denver Digs Trees a dozen years ago, I helped plant a linden two blocks down, take pride in its now handsome height.

Turning east at 28th, I watch Flight for Life hovering over St. Luke-Presbyterian’s heliport, which barges above treetops to the south, along with the bright red cranes of the new St. Joe’s hospital. Skirting Manual, I enter Fuller Park.

Half a dozen dogs and owners are in the dog park like always. In the early 1980s, Fuller Park was home to drinking and dice. My black neighbors—except for a few Hispanics all my neighbors were black—didn’t let their children play there. The street divided school from park then, but that block of 28^th was vacated in a school expansion and as a result, our block got quieter, the park nicer. The dog park was added. Now, young mothers push tow-headed children on swings. A bonus of art museum construction, fifteen crabapples thrive on the eastern side of Fuller, relocated from the strip park that was across 13^th from the Denver Public Library.

Heading home, I remember my African-American neighbors who one by one moved away.

“Don’t leave me,” I pleaded with Bobbie, whose yard was radiant, and who I depended on for plant advice. She moved to a condo.

“This old house—I just can’t.” Freida said, and bought a new one in Aurora.

Elderly homeowners died and their families sold to developers who fixed and flipped and the new owners were usually white.

Twenty-five years ago, when I took this walk I saw mainly African-American residents. They had country habits, sat on their front porches in the evening, said hello as I passed, sometimes idled their cars in the middle of the street for a conversation with a friend out working in her yard. Mr. Henderson across the alley kept chickens, but in 1986 keeping chickens in the city was outrageous. Today those I’ve seen have been mainly white, jogging or working on their houses or patiently following toddlers’ slow progress on big wheels. We are all still “in the same quick current,” and Whittier is in the midst of another turning.