Bounded by Colfax Avenue on the south, Colorado Boulevard on the west, 52nd Avenue on the north, and Quebec Street and Syracuse Street on the east, Park Hill was established in 1887 by the grandly named Baron Allois Gillaume Eugene A. von Winckler. The baron took inspiration from another Prussian, Baron Walter von Richthofen, who platted the Montclair neighborhood in 1885. Like Montclair, Park Hill was originally a commuter suburb, linked to the urban center by streetcar lines that ran along Colfax, Twenty-Third and Twenty-Sixth avenues.
Buffered from what developers then touted as the “declining” neighborhood of Cap Hill by City Park, the former home of dairies and brickyards became a haven for many of Denver’s prosperous residents, boasting its own racetrack and Colorado Women’s College, which called itself “the Vassar of the West.”
Park Hill was almost exclusively White until the late 1950s, when middle-class Black families began to seek homes in the area. Realtors stoked “White flight” and “for sale” signs began mushrooming. The Park Hill Action Committee (now Greater Park Hill Community, Incorporated) formed in 1960, attempting to build and integrated and inclusive community. In 1968, Park Hill resident and school board member Rachel Noel was instrumental in integrating public schools…