Life Has Returned To The Auraria Campus!

I took the light rail train to downtown Denver this past Friday afternoon to take care of a few chores, and on the way home walked across the Auraria Campus, where I was pleased to see there were actually people out and about, a major change from the last time I was there. Auraria is home to the University of Colorado at Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the Community College of Denver, but during the summer months, the place is deserted. I went into the Tivoli Student Center last June or July, and it was completely empty, evoking a very eerie feeling in that huge Victorian structure. I am glad to see there is now more life in the place, which was once a brewery when Auraria was an actual neighborhood. 

The saddest part of my visit to the Tivoli this past summer was that the Tivoli Brewing Company was closed until further notice. This is a brew pub located on the first floor of the complex, and occupies part of the space the original brewery occupied 150 years ago. Of course, back then it was a major operation, on a par with Coors, but today is a small craft brewery. However, I suspect the beer is now much better. And so I was happy to find the place open once again, and people once again sitting on it's patio, enjoying both the day and the beer, as seen in the photo on the right. MSU has a brewing program, by the way, and Tivoli Brewing is heavily involved with it. It makes me wonder if it is too late to go back to school and get a degree in beer? Nah - probably a bad idea.

And as usual, I finished my stroll with a visit to the 9th Street Historic District, where it is always 1880. This is the one block that was preserved when the entire neighborhood was leveled to build the Auraria campus. This was a big mistake, but one made by a lot of other cities, too, back in the 1960s and 70s. The City of Chicago destroyed an old Italian neighborhood, the site of Jane Adams' Hull House (which alone was saved from the wrecking ball), to build the University of Illinois Circle Campus on Chicago's West Side. These days, thanks to historic preservation groups across the country, I don't think something like that can ever happen again. At least I hope so.