- dana crawford is perhapsthe best known preservationist in colorado. but unless you work inurban planning, real estate development, orarchitecture, you've probably never heard of her. hi, i'm john ferrugia. since the 1960's dana has beensaving and creating spaces. from larimer square and oxfordhotel to the flour mill lofts in union station.
lower downtown denverwould not look the same without her tireless efforts. discover the woman whochanged the face of a city. and now coloradoexperience, dana crawford. - dana crawford isa force of nature. - she single-handedlyhad of vision, grew and grew and grew intothe city that we have today, which is a world class city. - when you are walking arounddenver and you're thinking,
well, this is a nice area, thisis really such a vital city, you're unknowingly givingthe tribute to dana crawford. - she was doing somethingbefore there was a national register of historic places. - dana's incrediblycreative, incredibly bright, incredibly visionary,but also battled hard. and she did tough things at atime that just what women did. - denver would not be what itis today without dana crawford. - this program was funded bythe history colorado state
historical fund. supporting projectsthroughout the state to preserve, protect,and interpret colorado's architectural andarchaeological treasures. - history coloradostate historical fund, create the future,honor the past. - with support from thedenver public library, history colorado. with additional fundingand support from these fine
organizations andviewers like you. thank you. [music playing] - born in the smalltown of salina, kansas during the greatdepression, dana crawford did not seem destinedto become one of the most prominentpreservationists in the country. dana's intense self-motivationand infectious personality
followed her throughouther early years. but she did notstart her life's work until she set foot on thestreets of lower downtown denver in the1960s from then on, dana worked tireless topreserve and revitalize forgotten areas of denver,making it the vibrant rich city that it is today. - for a long time, i saidi was a preservationist. me that preservation
became sort of a frighteningsubject to a lot of people. so then i said that iwas a civic entrepreneur. and then i said iwas a developer. i'm back to beinga preservationist. - she's one of the greatpreservationists in america. - historic buildings don'twork if they're empty. you can't save abuilding if it's empty. i think it's impossible to listall the projects that dana has done because there are so many.
- larimer square, it willalways be a favorite. and the oxford hotel willalways be a favorite. the union station projectis just a big star. a transformative projectin a neighborhood that i worked onfor over 50 years. i think i was ledinto it by fate. once you become involvedwith development, it's definitelytakes over your life. if you do somethingand people love it,
you want to do that more. - dana hudkins wasborn on july 22, 1931. dana's childhoodwas a happy one, surrounded by the love ofher family and friends. - dana crawford, inher younger days, had opportunitiesand experiences that might not haveadded up for anything for another sort of person. but became a vision andan action plan for her.
- i was born insalina, kansas, which is a community at that timeof 32,000 people, plunk right in the middle ofthe state of kansas. i was an only child, which wasa very big disappointment to me. but i had lots of friends. and kansas people arevery friendly people. and so i had a really fabuloustime growing up there. and every summer my motherand i would go to ohio to visit her family.
that's probably where theinterest in old buildings and historic stories start. salina was such agreat place to grow up, i'm sure that this drivingforce that i have about building community started there. my mother was very interestedin the cultural side of life and was very active inthe art association. - her father managed aboat dock and marina. and she worked therein the summers.
and her father was adistributor of chris-crafts. in the backgroundof our growing up, we heard the whistlesof the trains. and we were also awareof the cathedrals of the plains that arecalled the wonderful grain elevators, whichwere all concrete and always colored white. - it was an outdoorsyyoung woman, horseback riding and boating.
curiosity too. she probably was a lot for a lotof young men her age to handle. - i went to a lot of schools. they were all inhistoric buildings. and i lived and a big homewith a lot of other gals. i had graduated fromuniversity of kansas with a english lit degree. what are you going to dowith an english lit degree? teach or find somebodyto marry you, preferably.
- be ambitious as a woman inpost world war ii america, kind of a framework wherethe ambition should be a well-placed husband andvery excellent children. it's not great to be a veryvisible descendant from that. - i was in a greatgraduate program that was part ofharvard and radcliffe. and we had a great time there. and of course, being inboston was an inspiration. a complete inspiration.
- when she talks aboutgoing to radcliffe, and how sophisticated shefelt. the first time she was served a martini,she was asked if she wanted an olive or an onion. and she wasn't sure whatthey meant by the question. living back east, shewas really exposed to a incredibly rich urbanenvironment that influenced her for the rest of her live. boston is one of the mostwalkable cities in america.
it has all of thesebeautiful historic buildings that have a verypedestrian orientation. - i've wonderedoften what denver would be if danacrawford hadn't decided to move from boston to denver. - when the time camefor me to find a career, i had planned togo back to boston, but my roommate to begot married that summer. so i had no one to live with.
and i had friendshere in denver. and by that time i knew i wantedto go into public relations. i had the list of peoplein the middle '50s that i wanted to interview with,and i wanted to go to work for. and the people that iwanted to go to work for didn't really want to hire me. so i decided thati wouldn't let up. and i like to wear hats. i don't wear hats asmuch as i did then,
but i would go out forevery little job interview that i had withkostka and associates, i would go outand buy a new hat. and then all of asudden, they had to go to a long meetingin colorado springs, and they didn't haveanybody to cover the office. so i got the phonecall and got the job. and through thevery limited number of people in the pr field, igot to know a lot of people
in just a very few weeks. it turned out to be thefoundation of friendships and working relationshipsfor many years. and i got to knowhow to sell an idea. - as dana thrived in herpublic relations career, she met and marriedjohn crawford. and together they had four sons. she kept several clients andworked out of her home office while caring for her family.
she even volunteered full timeat the struggling denver art museum. but she never lost thedream to do something big. - john crawford was a petroleumengineering graduate for mines. he was a geologist. he did get going in theoil and gas business. four tiny children and avery active social life. that would seem todo it for most of us. with john crawford, she did endup with a person who could say,
you seem to be a person who'salways going to get in trouble. you might as well getin trouble making money. - after world war ii, goodtimes came back to denver. denver really began to boom onceagain in the 1940s and 1950s. the tabor walk and the miningexchange building, and so many of these gems of denverin the 1880s and 1890s were now run downand dilapidated. subject to almost a century'sworth of the neglect. - there were two hugefederally funded programs
that dramaticallyplayed into how american cities looktoday versus how they look before world war ii. and that was the developmentof the interstate highway system, which has funded underthe eisenhower administration. and right on the heels of that,was the idea of urban renewal. - funded by the federalgovernment, the denver urban renewal authority,or dura, planned to demolish more than 30 squareblocks of historic buildings
in downtown denver. - the city's plan was tobasically remove this, what they called the blightedcommunity and replace it with modern new buildings in apost-war architectural style. - even the citizensof denver voted to tax themselves to advancethis urban renewal program. there really wasvery little value for the beautifulhistoric buildings that made up denverat that time.
- and the idea was if youtear it down, they will come. new developers who would comein and rebuild your cities. and in fact, thatreally did not occur. - the urban renewal wasabsolutely not unique to denver. people were comingback from the war. they were having kids. they wanted to move into nicenew homes in the suburbs. conspiring to build supportof the future of america
that we all know now. and it was coming at the costof demolishing old america. - denver lost alot of buildings. there were a lot of parkinglots that surrounded downtown. and on every oneof those parking lots had been ahistoric structure. - but it wasn'tuntil dana crawford along that somebody actuallycame up with a positive plan to do something about it.
- what dana wantedto do was to create these great peopleplaces like she had seen in other cities andboston, and in her travels in europe. she was at odds withthe city fathers at that time who were veryactive in this urban renewal program. - my passion was to findan area that i thought would work from a historicbuilding perspective,
and also be a place wheregenerations come together and celebrate their city. and i kept lookingfor the place. - larimer street was denver'soriginal main street. it had been laid out in1859 by william larimer. - it's where ourfirst post office was. we had a city hall. - it was really one of thefirst streets in denver. - but in the 1890sdenver's business district
had reoriented down 16thstreet and 17th street instead. by the 1890s and early1900s larimer street, once denver's main street had kindof fallen into hard times. it had street car linesright down the middle. it had horse poop in themiddle of the street. the sky was blackwith telegraph lines. - the story goes, shewould get in her car and drive around the cityand look for opportunities. one day on a particularlyhot day something
happened to her car. - larimer square was skid row. and here is this well-dressed,east coast-looking, pearls and a hat. and her car breaksdown, and there's some drunks in a doorway. and instead of beingafraid or whatever, she just asks for their help. and they're all justperfectly pleasant to her,
and she's perfectlypleasant to them. - and while allthis was going on, she happened to noticethe buildings around her. and sure enough, itwas larimer square. that was in 1964. - all kinds of life experiencescome together for her. the memory of newengland towns, the sense of community of peoplebumping into each other in a small town in kansas.
all that comes together for her. and ambition. - i realize that everythingthat had become city started in the 1400 block. and it was slated to be removed. and i distinctlyremember thinking i've talked about this alot, and now i have to do it. oops. and that oops wasa really long time,
because i workedon it for 22 years. - she found out who the ownerswere, what the situations were with tenants are not tenants,and then just quietly made an offer. - she was doing something beforethere was a national register of historic places,long before there were any sort of tax incentives. she was trying to be a stepahead of dura to purchase the buildings before they did.
- what she did wasaccumulate an entire block, which created even more value. because you really hada place, and in fact, almost a neighborhood, amixed-use neighborhood. - the buildings werealways beautiful, but they had falleninto huge disrepair. and they werefilled with pigeons. and one of thebuildings actually didn't even have side walls.
all of the electricity,their plumbing, everything needed to be rebuilt. this was ahuge, huge restoration project. - if you're going to take on aproject as dana crawford did, you have to be subtle,and maybe even sneaky. because if peopleknow that there is some major economicdevelopment plan under way, the prices are goingto climb very fast. then, bunching a veryambitious enterprise of getting the funding.
- she tells the storyof going to a bank, describing thevision for a project, and the banker kind oflooks at her blankly. and then he turnsto dana's husband and starts asking questions. she was doing business in a timewhen women just didn't do this. - no banks would lend to her. who would lend to a mother offour kids who just has a dream? so she managed to finance itwith friends and her husband.
- i didn't feel limited. and that's partly becauseof the graduate program i went through. i was balancing afamily and the job, and a lot of volunteer work. just juggling,juggling, juggling. and then the ideaof loaning money to save some of thebuildings on skid row to some organizationthat was led by this dame
made it real easy forthe bankers to say no. - she had thatadditional obstacle of being a womanin a man's world. and real estate development, youneed to have some sharp elbows, and you also have to havegood political savvy, and you got to bea big risk taker. and dana's got allthose things in spades. - a man with forceand enterprise is not going to makeeveryone feel comfortable.
a woman with forceand persistence is going to leave somepeople just rattled. - larimer square isstill successful today. - larimer square wasthe first project, but it was the projectthat led to many others. - you talk a lotabout urban pioneers. well, dana's morelike an urban gorilla. she goes in really early, longbefore anybody else has even considered developingin a place.
and that's hard. that means you're sometimesthere by yourself. that was certainly thecase with the oxford hotel. - the oxford was built in 1891. continued to operate as ahotel all through world war ii. in the late '70s, it wasreally primarily a flop house. you could rent amattress for about $10. the neighborhood itwas really skid row. i would say thatlodo was just low.
the hotel was up andrunning, but they were forced to throw thehotel into bankruptcy in 1986. the bankruptcydid not stop dana. they found a partner, theyrecapitalized the hotel. worked their wayout of chapter 11. when i met danain 1989, the hotel was doing very, very poorly. we conjured up a plan and putthe hotel back into chapter 11. as dana affectionately calledthe second one chapter 22.
- in october of 1985,dana's life changed forever. her husband and partner johnsuffered a fatal heart attack. and within two weeks shealso lost her father. dana slowly recovered,but she never remarried. instead, focusing our efforts onher sons and many grandchildren and her work. - dana crawford is smart,she's got amazing intuition. she's funny, she's tough,holds you accountable. - she became a realtor soshe could have a license
to do thesebuildings, and didn't have to depend onsomeone else to do it. so she got a london taxi cabto take her clients around to convince her investorsthat this larimer square, or lodo, or theoxford was a great investment. - the flower milllofts were originally flower mills created by thelongmont farmer's alliance. ultimately, it was taken overby the colorado milling elevator company.
and ultimately flour millingwent away from colorado to consolidated in placeslike commerce city. and for decades,it was abandoned. a dilapidated buildingthat was used as a crash place for drug addicts. - in kansas, yourprimary landmarks are them grainelevators, as they really flow out across the prairie. and when i first moved to denverin '54, i spied the flour mill.
ultimately, we were ableto develop the flour mill, and kind of be a pioneer outthere in the platte valley. - the flour mill is aspecial project for her, because it's sort ofa reference to kansas. it was full of equipment. it was full of graffiti. and some of the graffitiis actually still in the stairwell. - 99.9% of the peoplelooked at that building
for years and yearsand years and years. and she saw lofts. everybody else sawtear the thing down. - by doing the firstprojects in lower downtown, she proved thatthere was a market. not only for a hotelor design center, but maybe most importantfor residential. [sound of train] [train whistle] - union station wasoriginally built in 1880.
between the 1880s andthe 1940s union station was the hub of downtown denver. tens of thousands of peoplepassed through union station every single day. to the end of worldwar ii, train travel was really super important. the advent of suburbs,people wanting to get out of the cities. so union station reallyslowly started to deteriorate.
and so dana and i walked overto union station one day. we were standingin the great hall. there were no people in there. there were these wood benches,tons of hard surfaces, echo chamber. an empty building. dana goes, we're going toturn this into a hotel. i said, great. let's do it.
- denver had been working onthat project for easily 25 years. and dana had beenprobably envisioning the reuse of unionstation for all if not longer of those 25 years. this was a long termvision to really make union station become somethingthat was the heart of our city. - lots of meetings, lotsof conversations involving historic denver, and thecity, and developers,
and the property owners. - she had a lot to do withthe idea of a plaza, the idea of maintaining the openspace so that it could really become denver's mostimportant public space. - it's as close asyou can get in denver to the piazza navona in rome. it is that kind ofurban experience. there are kids playing, thereare people down there shopping at the market.
there are people whohave just strolled down. truly has becomedenver's living room. a massive undertaking toshoehorn hotel into what's actually a very small building. it was just oneof those projects that only dana couldhave actually pulled off. because there were somany different entities. the property itwas owned by, rtd, different investors,history colorado
reviewing it for federal taxcredits, the city of denver was reviewing it fordenver landmark concerns. had to be organized ina way that we were all moving towards thecompletion of the project. dana was the only person thatcould have really pulled that off. - she's also been calledon by cities and developers around the country to helpthem visualize what's possible. - because she sees thathistoric sense of place.
and that's what shesees in idaho springs. she goes, oh my gosh! i did not know thiswas such a cool place. it's got great bones, we justneed to do something with it. - so she's always,her entire career, taken on projects nobody elsewould have even considered. so the idea that she's workingin idaho springs and the argo mill-- and while it may be asuperfund site, none of that will be an obstacle for dana.
- the argo mill andmine are, i guess it would be the epitome ofa preservation challenge and opportunity. because everybodyknows that property. and they're all curiousabout the property. and it's such aextremely important part of the history of coloradoand the united states. superfund sites have beenreused all over the country. i guess that i'mjust mostly attracted
to difficult projects. hopefully ultimately we'llbe able to build houses. - dana always saidthat she wanted to build an italian hill town. and she says this maybe her last chance. she has a vision really ofexpanding in development around the argo millthat really will contribute to theeconomy of idaho springs. - the vision for this27 acre superfund
national historicsite is this will be a destination andan education center also for studentsthat want to learn about the history of mining andmilling in the united states. at one point, thiswas the center of technology forthese processes back in the early 20th century. dana has even said she thinksthis is going to be bigger than union station.
- i'm currently obsessedand have fallen in love with trinidad, colorado. it's a very, very remarkableand sensational community with a gigantic history, inthe very far southern part of the state of colorado. she is very involved inworking in the town of trinidad in southeastcolorado and helping to save historic buildings. she has acquired anold brewery down there.
and she's working onturning it into both a brewery and a boutique hotel. but she has beenvery supportive, along with the city of trinidad,on developing a project down there thatwill provide housing for artists, very affordable. and again i thinkfundamentally changed the economy of trinidad. - preservation is importantbecause it gets inside people.
and they understand thatthey are part of a changing tradition for their community. if they understand wherethat community has been, then they have a muchbetter opportunity to participate in its future. - and everybody thinks ofdana as this incredible preservationist, and she is. but that's almost abyproduct of what she does. what she's really aboutis using old buildings
to create really vibrant,really lively urban spaces. places that becomepart of our lives. and she is creatingthese incredible gifts that she's leaving the city ofdenver that happened to involve preserving historic buildings. - historic preservation reallyis very engaged with the who are we now and who dowe want to be in the future. - walking through larimersquare, you can feel it. and union station, youcan feel the bustle
of late 1800s andearly 1900s of what that train station was like. but now it's an uber livingroom of denver, isn't it? - anyone whoaccomplishes a great deal is always subject to criticism. - dana crawford found outa way to make history pay. however, in so doing, she pricedout the historic community that had lived in thatneighborhood for more than 80 years.
it's a tough time right nowbecause denver is such an extraordinarily desirableplace that we in a way risk becoming the san francisco of the rocky mountain region. and it is a tough problem i don't know the solution to. she really grew upin an environment where to besuccessful as a woman, you had to be pretty aggressive.
i think men can havethe same attitude and can act the same way, butyou don't say that about a man. - unfortunately, the criticsdon't bother me a whole lot. i'm kind of a person that likesto be friendly with everybody. but sometimes i get grumpyand outspoken and subject to deserving to be criticized. i mean, buzz on, you know? if you spend a lot of timeworrying about what people say about you, you're goingto spend a lot of time
that you could spend doingsomething meaningful. - while much of denver hasbecome a sprawling metropolis of the future, dana crawfordmade her mark on the city by protecting and enhancingits history and roots, despite massive structures thathave turned denver's skyline into one of metal and glass,dana crawford's efforts have maintained the brick-laced soulof this city for modern times. - and she's not finished. dana and her ideas are just asimportant now as they've ever
been. she's ageless. - dana reminds us everyday is that if first you don't succeed, try, try again. and the fact that she isstill doing this today is just demonstratesthe energy that she has, that the visionshe continues to have, the ideas she always has. and her ability to pullpeople, projects, and financing
together to get them done. - i don't think there'sanything slowing dana down. she just-- sheloves it too much. if you're in thereal estate business, find out where dana isgoing, wait a few years, because she's way aheadof everybody else, and then buyeverything in sight. and you will doreally, really well. - we're grateful to thework that she's done here.
we're grateful for thementoring she's done. and we're so gratefulto her for the buildings that still stand today becauseof her investment, her ideas, her vision, and her hard work. - and this is a great timefor america and for the world. there is a muchgreater appreciation for the built environment. - dana's legacy isthe city of denver. i love you, dana.
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