6 and 20 of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from 1890, courtesy of the University of Colorado Boulder Library. Colfax Avenue wouldn’t be curved around the park for nearly thirty more years. The second image shows a cropped part of Plate 13 from the Baist Real Estate Atlas and Surveys of Denver from 1905. As can be seen in the 1890 map, a boarding house once stood at the southeast corner of Colfax and Bannock. By the 1905 map, the Carnegie Library (today’s McNichols Building) was shown.

In 1904, Mayor Speer was elected to the office for the first of three terms. He immediately proposed plans for a civic center park, and some projects started. A plan to extend 16th Street to the capitol building was called for butdefeated. By 1912, nothing had happened, and Mayor Speer lost reelection, thus killing the plan… until Mayor Speer won his third term in 1916. Work on the park began immediately and everything between Broadway, Bannock, Colfax, and 14th Avenue was razed.

Below are photos of today’s McNichols Building, the only building on the two city blocks that survived, and the Civic Center Park’s ample green space and many monuments.

By 1917, Mayor Speer and the City of Denver had their park. This beautiful park connected the Colorado Capitol building to…nothing. The City and County Building didn’t begin construction until the mid-1920s, and Mayor Speer, who spent nearly 15 years championing the park, passed away from the flu in 1918.

Today, the park offers great views of the Colorado State Capitol and