The Welton Corridor

Historically, the Welton Corridor — approximately 85 acres of land situated just to the northeast of downtown Denver and centered around Welton Street, has long  been the heart of the Five Points neighborhood. In the earliest years, starting in the 1860’s,  this area was home to members of Denver’s aristocracy, including mayors, governors, and prominent businesspeople. Beginning  in the 1920’s, as many African-Americans left southern states like Texas as part of the Great Migration, Five Points emerged as a majority black neighborhood. And the Welton Corridor was its heart; comprised of more than fifty bars and nightclubs, as well as numerous churches and local stores. Beginning in the late 1950s, the neighborhood’s fortunes began to change.

The phenomenon of “urban flight,” in which black Denverites with the means began to quit downtown for the suburbs, contributed to a growing rash of poverty, drugs and crime, abandoned properties and closing shops and businesses in Five Points. By the 1970s and 80s, Five Points faced increasing numbers of abandoned properties and blight. Revitalization projects like the Blair Caldwell African American Research Library and the Central Corridor Light Rail System were key beginning to reverse the area’s decline, but much more can be done to restore Five Points as a multi-ethnic, multi-income residential and commercial enclave.