Dana Crawford, who saved Denver’s Larimer Square, has died

Dana Hudkins Crawford, a colorful, irreverent and tenacious woman who spent much of her life preserving Denver’s architectural past and then shared her expertise to help others preserve and reuse historic buildings in Colorado, died late Thursday night, her son Jack Crawford. She was 93.

Born and raised in Kansas, she came to Denver in 1953 to work in public relations and advertising. While studying graduate business courses at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she became familiar with New England villages and their urban businesses intended as gathering places.

She felt that her adopted hometown lacked a similar place to meet. With no real estate experience and no money of her own, she persuaded a group of friends to buy and renovate the 1400 block of Larimer Street before it could be flattened by the Denver Urban Renewal Authority—she referred to it as the Denver Urban Removal Authority—which changed the face of Denver center in the early 1960s.

In a 2014 interview, She explained that the street was the historic heart of the city, but by the 1960s it had become notorious. “The word was that Larimer Street was just evil,” Crawford said. “There were 66 schlocky bars on the street, and many times there were drunks lying on the pavement.”

Unseen and unimaginable at the time, in 1965, Crawford had bought nearly the entire block of wobbly buildings, rebuilt some, again to create Larimer Square. Despite skeptics and naysayers, lines of customers soon stretched down to Market Street, eager to get into your father’s bare beer hall, the viola-class German restaurant and the 1421 nightclub.

Her conservation instincts for refreshing old buildings and moving profitable businesses and restaurants into them not only became a financial success, but soon caught on as a nationwide movement to preserve the past.

Crawford continued to preserve old buildings in Denver, including the dilapidated Oxford Hotel at 16th and Wazee streets, which had bare light bulbs in the rooms. She persevered through hard times, declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice with Oxford. But she typically found humor in her dilemmas, referring to them as Chapter 22. Today, the elegant and mostly full hotel is home to Moody Art Deco Cruise Room Barthat serves Crawford’s favorite cocktail, a dirty Martini.

Her vision for Denver’s future was clear and strong when she set out to preserve the Ice House on Wynkoop Street and transform red brick warehouses filled with pigeons and broken windows into elegant residential lofts. She and others saved most of the older buildings in downtown Denver, from Larimer Street down to Union Station, from demolition. Denver Post columnist Dick Kreck named the area “Lodo.”

Her vision eventually took her over Broadway, where she ignited the preservation of the Uptown neighborhood, as well as the area between Coors Field and the South Platte River, including the longtime pride of the Rockies Mel Mill at 20th and Little Raven, where She spent the last few decades of his life living in a lovely loft with its windows no more than 20 meters above the rumbling freight trains. Her salon style dinner parties were legendary with invitations sought after.

Crawford’s vision broadened down to Trinidad, where she markedly preserved parts of downtown; to Pueblo, to Leadville and to the abandoned Argo Gold Mine in Idaho Springs, which she helped shape plans to create a hotel, restaurant and hill in the residential community.

Her final efforts in Denver resulted in the preservation and transformation of Denver Union Station Railroad Terminal at 17th and Wynkoop streets. Reconstruction included a new hotel on the top two floors, which her partners reverently named the Crawford Hotela tribute to her work and leadership (and over her objections).

She was appointed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation Board for more than 10 years, five of which served on the executive committee. She received almost every award possible for her conservation work and generously donated back to the community.

Her husband, John, died in 1985. She is survived by her four sons: Jack, of Denver; Peter of Boulder; Tom, from New York; and Duke of Mexico.

Services are pending.

Former Denver Post reporter Mike McPhee wrote a biography of Dana Crawford in 2015, “Dana Crawford: 50 Years Saving a City’s Soul.”