City preview · DENVER

Denver’s blue bear wants a look inside

At the convention center, a bear peers through the glass. Its blue coat began as a model-making accident. During the stock show, the Brown Palace welcomes a champion steer. Two street grids meet at Five Points, and autumn trees trace the bends of an old canal.

4 web previews 60 stories in the app

I See What You Mean · Editorial illustration, not a historical photo

Denver and the High Line Canal

A blue bear, a champion steer, Five Points and canal-side cottonwoods

Four complete stories and their public sources are shown here; the rest of the collection is in the app.

01 · I See What You Mean

A bear at the window

The blue was a modeling accident. The curiosity wasn't.

Lawrence Argent gave Denver a bear that wanted a look inside the convention center. Its nose and paws lean toward the glass, making a huge sculpture seem absorbed in whatever is happening indoors. The blue emerged by chance during the modeling process and stayed. Against the glass facade, that unexpected color makes the bear's very ordinary act of peeking hard to miss.

Source: visitdenver.com Source: denverpublicart.org

02 · The Brown Palace Hotel and Spa, Autograph Collection

An unusual tea guest

A champion steer joins the hotel's afternoon-tea tradition.

The Brown Palace has a Stock Show tradition rather different from afternoon tea: bringing a champion steer into the hotel lobby. A space usually set for tea and hotel guests has also hosted prizewinning cattle. Two sides of Denver life meet at the entrance. A champion chosen out at the livestock show still has to come through the hotel doors.

Source: cpr.org Source: nationalwestern.com

03 · North Washington Street & East 26th Avenue

Five corners

Two street grids met here and couldn't quite agree.

Five Points began as the name of an intersection. Denver's early street grid followed the rivers, while later streets took a different, more nearly north-south alignment. Where the two layouts meet, streets join at unusual angles rather than forming an ordinary crossroads. The intersection's name eventually spread to the neighborhood. Walking along Welton, you can see where the streets stop lining up.

Source: en.wikipedia.org Source: fivepointsbid.com

04 · High Line Canal Trail — deKoevend Park

The canal's long bend

The golden trees follow water, not the street grid.

The High Line Canal seems to take the long way around. To move water without pumping it all the way, its designers followed a shallow downhill route, bending around changes in the terrain. Roads and homes later filled the surrounding land, but the canal kept its curves. Cottonwoods grew into a belt along its banks. In fall, their color traces the old water route beside the square edges of playing fields and city blocks.

Source: denverwater.org Source: denverwater.org

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