Early Denver oil and gold barons began building their mansions in Curtis Park in the
1880s before changing their minds and heading to the Capitol Hill neighborhoods
farther southeast. The neighborhood is still filled with striking homes in varying
states of decrepitude and rehabilitation, and with fondness, this can be said for
neighborhood residents as well. This two-block stretch of Champa Street is
well-documented in Cassady's autobiography: The vacant corner lot, next to the
mustard-yellow Gertrude apartments, is the site where the Snowden apartment house
once stood, the center of Cassady's early pre-school and elementary school youth.
Looking north and to the right, you'll see the Puritan Pie Company building:
Cassady's brothers used to bootleg whiskey in their apartment next door to the pie
company, using the pie aroma as a cover for their activities; and Cassady's father
would occasionally give haircuts in exchange for pies as treats for Cassady and his
siblings.
Across the street, on the eastern side, you'll see one of the many barber shops
where Cassady's father used to work: it's the tiny, boarded-up storefront near the
southeastern corner. Next to it is "The Bakery," where little Neal used to play
(you can still see the painted "Cream Butter Cheese Eggs" on the storefront
windows). This half block for Cassady was filled with sexual adventure (and
misadventure) along with his first-ever mind-eyeball-kicks (a technique developed
by Cassady to heighten awareness) at the hands of his demonic older brother, who
tried repeatedly to suffocate Cassady behind the fold-up bed in the Snowden.
Cassady's vivid paragraph about the Snowden in The First Third tells you all you
need to know to compose a mental snapshot of what this corner was like:
"But I knew best The Snowden, that castle of my childhood around which centered the
splintered domesticity of Depression-splotched families such as mine...it was a
rather infamous place, mostly noted as a bootleg stronghold, although also
notorious, over the eastside anyway, for its characters, who were typical yet
unusual enough in their own right: ex-convicts, perverts, a jazz musician or two,
several prostitutes (usually unpimped), addicts (mainly alcoholic), numerous wild
young men. Though mostly visitors of lusty mind and crooked action, there was too a
small normal core of pious parents such as Mother, struggling for their many
children, and maybe even a few vicarious old maids or bachelors. And although The
Snowden occupants were all poor, or perhaps more so because of it, they rocked the
joint night and day, for the place had a noise mania; the air seemed always filled
with assorted yelping catcalls, shouted curses, frightened screams and, topping
all in my mind, those exciting feminine whoops of laughter. There was hardly a
moment that something untoward wasn't happening..."
DIRECTIONS TO THE NEXT STOP
Take 26th Street west (toward the mountains) for four blocks to Larimer Street and take
a left, toward downtown. Continue south for 10 blocks to 15th Street.
DENVER'S BEAT POETRY DRIVING TOUR