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He can almost see her. Henry Johns stands in the back of his mother’s house on Monroe Street and pictures her kneeling beside the fence, turning soil, planting seeds.
She liked to grow things. The smell of wet dirt, the way flowers unfolded to the sun. Hollyhocks and tiger lilies. Her favorites.
Henry visits his mother’s house several times a month, though she’s been gone now for thirty years. He stands under the apple tree with his hands in his pockets, jingling loose change.
His roots run deep here, in the neighborhood of Harman. It’s where he was born 75 years ago. It’s where he brought his wife after World War II, to a house a few blocks away on Cook Street, where he raised two sons and two daughters, where he retired after a long career with the federal government. It’s where he belongs.
Henry squints into the noonday sun. Now he hardly recognizes the place. With all the new houses, all the new people. So he comes to Monroe Street, where he feels at home.
Developers call it neighborhood improvement. Others call it gentrification.
Here’s how it works: Someone buys a modest house in a middle-class neighborhood. But instead of adding another bedroom or fixing a leaky roof, the new owner tears it down and builds another house in its place. Perhaps a row of townhouses. Maybe even a mansion. Usually something bigger than the original, and certainly more expensive.
Next, the owner puts the property on the market and sells it for a huge profit. Land values soar, property taxes rise, old-timers and mid-income families get priced out of the neighborhood.
More modest houses are sold and replaced by bigger houses. More money changes hands.
On and on.
This is nothing new. It occurs whenever a city becomes popular and a neighborhood with charm, character or a great location–or all three–finds itself in demand.
Like Harman.
The community, which more recently has become known as Cherry Creek North, is bound by First Avenue, Sixth Avenue, York Street and Colorado Boulevard. Young families settled here in affordable two-bedroom cottages bordering the fields along the north bank of Cherry Creek. They trickled in, planted elm trees and rose gardens and, for the most part, stayed put for a generation or two.
Walk through the neighborhood today and you’ll find a new house, condominium, duplex or townhome on practically every block. And if it’s not a new house, it’s a construction pit or a “For Sale” sign. The original bungalows are toppling like dominoes.
The reason: Harman lies several blocks from the Cherry Creek Shopping Center and the boutiques lining First, Second and Third avenues. The Denver Country Club is just around the corner. So is Congress Park. So is the posh neighborhood of Hilltop. Downtown is only five miles away. People want to live here. And they’re willing to pay to do so, often $300,000 or more.
To urban planners, this is good news. It’s an answer to suburban sprawl. It’s a way to lure people to the city’s core, reduce freeway traffic and rejuvenate older communities. With larger homes come more tax dollars, more construction jobs and more shoppers for Cherry Creek stores. And for the neighborhood? It gets higher property values, new sidewalk shrubbery, nice tidy homes painted in a variety of pastels and earth tones.
But all this prosperity carries a price.
Henry: “It used to be that you knew everyone. You had to be careful what you said because a lot of people were related. You could be talking to someone’s cousin.”
Henry’s daughter, Susan Fultz: “When we were kids, you could be walking home from school and wreck your bike, and your parents would know about it by the time you came in the door. Someone up the street would call. People were that close.”
Henry’s wife, Vera: “Something you used to see was a lot of children. You don’t see that many anymore.”
Henry: “We used to have a school, but there were no kids, so it closed. Now it’s Carriage Row. Row after row of houses.”
Vera: “What you do see is people with dogs. They always say how friendly their dogs are. But you hardly see people stopping and visiting anymore.”
Henry: “You don’t see that many people, period.”
Vera: “The new homes have garages connected. They go in through the back and you never see them.”
Henry: “Who lives here? I have no idea. Must be doctors and lawyers and whoever else makes a lot of money. My grandfather bought the house on Monroe for $1,500 in 1911. Now, that barely covers the property taxes. We sure couldn’t afford to live here.”
Vera: “We used to have more sunshine in the yard.”
Henry: “What they do is build as big a building as they can. As a result everything is crammed together. Some of these places are so big, they look down on us. Literally.”
Vera: “There used to be more birds.”
Henry: “I’m sure we could lose some of the older houses, but it’s strange to see one couple living in a huge box of a house where a whole family used to be.”
Vera: “About ten years ago they started building walls around the houses.”
Henry: “It’s almost like people move to Harman because it’s convenient. They stay a few years, and then they leave. It’s like it’s a place for them to flop.”
Vera: “They’re constantly moving.”
Henry: “One house sells so often I never get a chance to get acquainted with the people who live there. It’s for sale again!”
Vera: “Fifty years ago you could sit on the porch on Monroe Street and see the mountains.”
Henry: “I used to walk through the alleys to see what people had growing in their gardens. Now what I see is garage doors.”
Vera: “The traffic is pretty bad.”
Henry: “If you don’t take your turn at the four-way stop, you get honked at. If you miss your turn at the four-way stop, you get honked at, too.”
Vera: “They’re always going somewhere.”
Henry: “I couldn’t believe this trend would continue as long as it did. But instead of continuing on, it got worse.”
Vera: “You can’t help it. What’s done is done. In twenty years it’s all going to be townhomes with walls around them.”
Susan: “It’s just a different feeling. It’s almost like you lost a sense of friendliness. There’s more of a chill now.”
Vera: “The people who move in here don’t think anything has been lost.”
Henry: “They have their own associations and their own meeting places.”
Vera: “When you go walking–we do a lot of walking–it’s almost like you’re invisible. Some of them would just as soon walk over you as look at you.”
Susan: “With the new people, it’s like, ‘I’m here, now move.'”
Vera: “We feel like we’re new here. We’ve lived here fifty years.”
Susan: “It’s still a nice place to live. I couldn’t think of a better place to raise my kids.”
Henry: “It is a good neighborhood. Just not the same.”
Gypsies used to sleep among the cottonwoods along Cherry Creek. Entire families of them, huddling in the backs of old cars and horse-drawn wagons.
Henry remembers well.
They came in the summertime, when days seemed to last forever. They skirted the edges of town, looking for odd jobs and outdoor labor, always looking for something.
When they came by, you kept close watch on tools, vegetable gardens and chicken coops. If you didn’t, your valuables disappeared in the trail of dust they kicked up on the way out.
When Henry was a boy, he hunted pheasants in the fields south of First Avenue, walked horses for the Cherry Creek Polo Grounds for a nickel, pilfered odds and ends from the junk dealer patrolling back alleys with a horse-drawn cart and yelling, “Rags! Iron! Bottles!”
When he was a boy, Harman was his entire world.
Six years ago, Henry wrote a booklet about the neighborhood called Harman and Its People. In it, he walks street to street, conjuring up memories. There’s a detailed map, photos of old school buildings and page after page of anecdotes.
Over on Monroe Street was where Ida May Broussard washed clothes with lye soap made in her backyard. And across the way on Madison Street was the house of Jack Ames. He ate grasshoppers for a nickel. The trick was first pulling off the head and removing the intestines. After that it was like eating a dry weed.
Up on Milwaukee lived a cobbler named Enrico Verdicchio who tended a garden of American roses and made wine in his basement. And over on St. Paul was Bill Cassell, who headed the Motor Vehicle Division and drove around with Colorado license plate No. 1.
Henry includes the songs people sang (“Summertime,” by Bob Crosby), the prices they paid at grocery stores (nine cents for a ten-pound sack of Colorado white potatoes), the preferred method of naming Harman streets (after pioneers, landmarks and flowers).
He even adds a bit of history. For a time, Harman was its own town, incorporated on November 17, 1886. It included 200 people and took its name from the landowner, Edwin Harman, a Civil War veteran who carried three bullets in his body. He was a Mississippi lawyer and judge before heading out West.
Harman had a town hall at Fourth and St. Paul, a public school at Fourth and Columbine and a post office at Third and Detroit. There also were twelve greenhouses, four churches, a general store, a riding academy, a blacksmith shop, a brickyard, a dentist’s office and a drug store.
The first mayor was James Motley, who was born in Switzerland and immigrated to the United States in 1853. After living in New York and Illinois, he moved to Colorado, enlisted in the cavalry and fought Indians at the battle of Sand Creek.
By the time Harman was annexed by the city of Denver on February 20, 1895, more than 500 people lived there.
Snake-oil medicine shows at an empty lot off St. Paul. The streetcar clanging up Third Avenue. Swimming in the sandpit ponds near Cherry Creek–fifty years before Temple Buell thought of building the country’s first shopping center there.
Henry thinks he must be old-fashioned. He gets notices all the time from real estate people asking if he wants to sell his house in the 400 block of Cook and his mother’s house on Monroe, which he rents out. He says no. He’s not that desperate. He hopes he never will be.
When you live in a place your whole life, sink roots and settle down, you have a stake there. You put something back. You stay for the long haul. You plant seeds and watch them grow. When you do that, they can’t pay you enough to leave.
In a way, Henry feels sorry for the man building a $2 million mansion three blocks over on St. Paul. The man says he and his wife will be able to walk to cafes and boutiques. To him, that’s all Harman might ever be.
Spring is the best time to visit the old house on Monroe. Henry sits on the edge of the broad cement porch like he did as a boy, legs hanging over the edge, savoring the fragrance of his mother’s wild plum blossoms.
The two blue spruce trees planted by his father to shade the house from the afternoon sun have grown twice as tall as the house now.
And look at the juniper. It’s practically as tall as the spruces. It was planted by his brother, Bill, in 1938. Bill died in World War II during the invasion of Sicily. He’s buried near Rome.
Henry can’t imagine traveling all that way to visit the grave. Bill’s spirit is alive here, he says. In Harman.
Contact Harrison Fletcher at his online address, harrison_fletcher@westword.com, or by phone at 303-293-3553.
