Alley scene, Denver Colorado. Summer 2024.

 

Prairie mural, downtown Denver

 

Colorado Baseball. Coors Field, Denver Colorado.

 

Lower Downtown Denver

 A building baring a variety of old signs in Lower Downtown Denver

Grain/Hay elevator, Lower Downtown Denver.

 A grain and elevator in Lower Downtown Denver, clearly no longer serving that purpose.

Baseball mural, 1998 All Star Game. Denver Colorado.

This mural is directly across from Coors field in downtown Denver.  The All Star Game was played at Coors Field in 2021, but this mural celebrates the 1998 game.

University Building, Denver Colorado.

What's depicted here is the smokestack of the University Building in Denver Colorado.

The University Building was built in 1910 as the A. C. Foster Building and was renamed in 1921 when it was donated to Denver University.  It contains many art deco embellishments.

A more recent embellishment to the building, which is now an apartment building, has been the painting of its smokestack as a No. 2 pencil, thereby playing on its name.

La Boheme, Denver Colorado.

This is a photograph of the mural on the side of La Boheme in Denver, which euphemistically calls itself a "gentleman's cabaret". By that it means, no doubt, something on the order of "strip club".

La Boheme, which means the female Bohemian in French, is located in what was once a pretty rough downtown Denver neighborhood which went through gentrification after Coors Field was constructed. The transformation in this area was remarkable and its still ongoing, Colorado's legalization of marijuana had reintroduced a feeling of decay into downtown once again.  At any rate, in spite of many old buildings being bought and converted into new upscale uses, and in spite of being located across the street from the downtown Embassy Suites, a nice Denver business hotel, La Boheme keeps on keeping on.

I can't recall this mural being there until just recently, so it's presumably a new addition.  Perhaps keeping in mind where it is, it's not shockingly skanky and is actually fairly well done.  It's placement resulted in a minor debate with my travel companions on whether it depicts Marilyn Monroe, Jenny McCarthy, or none of the above.  The first two choices would in some ways emphasize the tragic nature of the establishments purpose.  Anyhow, it's fairly well done except that the figures left hand, which isn't really visible in this photo, is quite meaty, making for an odd appearance.

Postscript

The image is in fact that of Marilyn Monroe.  I ran across it by accident elsewhere on the net.

Levee murals, Denver Colorado.

The City of Denver has revitalized Lower Downtown Denver ("LoDo") into an area which has become a hot district of the city.  Much of that revitalization involved redeveloping what had been an industrial area into a mixed residential urban district.

Everything depicted here, demonstrates that.

This area was once a very industrial area separating the Denver Heights from Downtown Denver, and it was all pretty gritty in some ways, although the Heights itself had been residential throughout.  Now, it's all redone.

Included in the redoing were these efforts at murals.  I can't say I regard them as a success, frankly, but the project is ongoing.