Arapahoe Acres Historic District - Englewood, Colorado Mid-Century Modern Homes

THE CROWN JEWEL OF THE DENVER METRO AREA

Arapahoe Acres is located in the municipality of Englewood, Colorado, in an area bound by Bates, Franklin, and Marion Streets, as well as Dartmouth Avenue in South Central Denver. Arapahoe Acres is close to both Swedish Medical Center and Porter Adventist Hospital, and is a stone’s throw away to Harvard Gulch Park, the shops on South Broadway and in the City of Englewood, and Wellshire Golf Course. The neighborhood resides just south of Denver University.

Arapahoe Acres is known for it’s deep seeded sense of community, and for attracting the city’s best intellectual and creative minds from designers, to musicians, to artists and academics. The homes in this neighborhood reflect two unique architectural styles - International Style and Usonian.

Arapahoe Acres will always be a legendary neighborhood not only locally, but on a national level, as this was the first entire Mid-Century Modern neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the country. It was officially added to the NRHP on November 3rd, 1998. The neighborhood is comprised of 123 individually unique and customized modern homes, all designed to fit the surrounding natural landscape.

THE STORY

In August of 1949, developer Edward Hawkins dreamed of building an entire subdivision, so he purchased a 30 acre parcel of land for $5,250. At the time, the Revere Copper and Brass Company joined with the Southwest Research Institute to create a national program to advance “better builder-architect relations and the general improvement of the quality of speculatively built houses”, which included homes of modern, cost-effective design, while using their copper and brass products in the building materials. In order to qualify for this program, Hawkins hired Eugene Sternberg, a professor at the University of Denver School of Architecture.

Sternberg’s designs and plans were readily accepted into the program, and the first nine homes in the neighborhood were built on October 13th, 1949, after the Englewood Fire Department begrudgingly accepted the neighborhoods radical street design. It was clear from the beginning that their subdivision concept was a hit, but Sternberg and Hawkins ultimately parted ways as Sternberg was more interested in creating affordable housing, while Hawkins desired a more grandiose design vision for the neighborhood. 20 homes were completed with Sternberg as the architect, mostly on the Marion Street side. Hawkins is credited with completing 70 homes with his own unique contemporary designs. Architect Joseph Dion was later added to the project and completed 35 homes. The neighborhood is sometimes misspelled as Arapaho Acres, oftentimes mixed up with Arapaho Hills.

ARAPAHOE ACRES MID MOD HOMES THAT HAVE SOLD IN THE PAST