Dana Hudkins Crawford, a colorful, irreverent and tenacious woman who spent much of her life preserving Denver’s architectural past and then shared her expertise to help others preserve and reuse historic buildings across Colorado, died late Thursday night, her son Jack Crawford said. She was 93.
Born and raised in Kansas, she came to Denver in 1953 to work in public relations and advertising. While studying graduate-level business courses at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she became enamored with New England villages and their town squares intended as gathering places.
She felt her adopted hometown was lacking similar place to meet. With no experience in real estate and with no money of her own, she persuaded a group of friends to purchase and renovate the 1400 block of Larimer Street before it could be flattened by the Denver Urban Renewal Authority — she referred to it as the Denver Urban Removal Authority — which changed the face of downtown Denver in the early 1960s.
In a 2014 interview, she explained the street was the historical heart of the city, but by the 1960s, it had become notorious. “The word was that Larimer Street was just evil,” Crawford said. “There were 66 schlocky bars on the street, and a lot of times there were drunks lying on the sidewalk.”
Unprecedented and unimagined at the time, by 1965 Crawford had purchased nearly the entire block of wobbly buildings, rebuilt some, repainted all to create Larimer Square. Despite the skeptics and naysayers, lines of customers soon stretched down to Market Street, anxious to get into Your Father’s Mustache beer hall, the Bratskellar German restaurant and the 1421 nightclub.
Her instincts for freshening up old buildings and moving profitable businesses and restaurants into them became not only a financial success but soon caught on as a nationwide movement to preserve the past.
Crawford continued preserving old buildings in Denver, including the run-down Oxford Hotel at 16th and Wazee streets, which had bare light bulbs in guest rooms. She persevered through hard times, declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice with the Oxford. Typically, though, she found humor in her dilemmas, referring to them as Chapter 22. Today, the elegant and mostly full hotel is home of the moody art deco Cruise Room bar, which serves Crawford’s favorite cocktail, a dirty martini.
Her vision for Denver’s future was clear and strong, as she began preserving the Ice House on Wynkoop Street, and transforming red brick warehouses filled with pigeons and broken windows into elegant residential lofts. She and others saved most of the older buildings of lower downtown Denver, from Larimer Street down to Union Station, from demolition. The Denver Post columnist Dick Kreck dubbed the area “LoDo.”
Her vision eventually took her above Broadway, where she ignited the preservation of the Uptown Neighborhood, as well as the area between Coors Field and the South Platte River, including the long-derelict Pride of the Rockies Flour mill at 20th and Little Raven, where she spent the last few decades of her life living in a lovely loft, with her windows not more than 20 feet above the rumbling freight trains. Her salon-style dinner parties there were legendary, with invitations coveted.
Crawford’s vision grew wider, down to Trinidad, where she significantly preserved parts of downtown; to Pueblo, to Leadville and to the abandoned Argo Gold Mine in Idaho Springs, for which she helped shaped plans to create a hotel, restaurant and hillside residential community.
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Her final efforts in Denver resulted in the preservation and transformation of the Denver Union Station railroad terminal at 17th and Wynkoop streets. Reconstruction included a new hotel in the top two floors, which her partners reverentially named The Crawford Hotel, a tribute to her work and leadership (and over her objections).
Walter Isenberg, co-founder of Sage Hospitality Group and one Crawford’s partners in the Union Station Alliance, called her “a true visionary and a powerful force in historic preservation.”
“Dana’s mighty spirit will continue to live on as people enjoy spending time at Denver Union Station, Larimer Square, The Crawford and The Oxford,” he said. “Not only was she a business partner, but also a dear friend and confidant. I am blessed to have had Dana in my life.”
She was appointed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation board for more than 10 years, five of which she served on the executive committee. She received almost every possible award for her preservation work, and donated generously back to the community.
Her husband, John, died in 1985. She is survived by her four sons: Jack, of Denver; Peter, of Boulder; Tom, of New York; and Duke, of Mexico.
Services are pending.
Former Denver Post reporter Mike McPhee wrote “Dana Crawford: 50 Years Saving the Soul of a City” in 2015.