The Neighborhood

The area known as "Five Points" is a historic neighborhood in Denver, centered around a five-way intersection of Welton Street, Washington Street, Twenty-Seventh Street, and East Twenty-Sixth Avenue. The name originated in 1881 when streetcar signs needed a shorter label for the line's terminus. Despite its initial association with slums in eastern cities like New York City, the name stuck.

By the time of its naming, Five Points was already a well-established neighborhood. In 1868, Curtis Park became Denver's first public park, and three years later, the area was connected to downtown by the Denver Horse Railroad Company. During the 1870s and 1880s, a period of significant growth, Curtis Park became one of Denver's most desirable suburbs. The surrounding neighborhoods were home to diverse commercial and industrial businesses, reflecting the area's diverse population of German, Irish, and Jewish residents. In 1882, Temple Emanuel, Denver's oldest Jewish congregation, constructed a large synagogue at the corner of Twenty-Fourth Avenue and Curtis Street.

Five Points - Denver

In the late 1880s and 1890s, Five Points began to change as affluent white residents moved to new mansions in Capitol Hill, and African Americans settled near the rail yards along the South Platte River. Denver Fire Station No. 3, located in the heart of Five Points, became the city's first all-Black fire station in 1893. During this time, Temple Emanuel relocated to Capitol Hill, while Shorter Community African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and Zion Baptist, the city's leading black churches, moved into Five Points from downtown.

By the 1920s, Five Points had become predominantly Black, partly due to a housing boom that allowed white residents to move to newer neighborhoods farther from downtown. The Great Migration of the 1910s–20s also brought a significant influx of Black residents to Denver. Discriminatory housing policies enforced segregation, concentrating about 5,500 of Denver's Black residents (over 75 percent) in Five Points by 1929.

Despite crowded conditions and older housing, Five Points thrived as a vibrant community, almost a city within itself. A bustling Black business community emerged, particularly along Welton Street. The Baxter Hotel, initially catering to whites, came under Black management in the late 1920s and was renamed the Rossonian. Five Points became renowned as the "Harlem of the West," known for its jazz scene. The Rossonian Lounge, the most important jazz club in Five Points, hosted renowned musicians such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole, who often stayed at the hotel and performed at the lounge between concerts downtown.