South Dahlia Lane Community - University Hills, Denver, Colorado Mid-Century Modern Homes

THE FIRST MODERNIST HOUSING CO-OP IN THE COUNTRY

South Dahlia Lane is a small private enclave of 32 Mid-Century Modern homes located around a private circular street with a park in the middle of it. South Dahlia Acres is another small pocket of MCM homes across Dahlia Street from this area. South Dahlia Lane has great freeway access and is close to all of the shops and stores along Colorado Boulevard. This neighborhood feeds into the highly coveted Cherry Creek School District. There is also quick driving access to the University of Denver, Virginia Village, and Washington Park. The neighborhood sides to baseball fields at Denver Academy, as well as Christian Living Communities.

THE STORY
The South Dahlia Lane enclave was first birthed as an idea in the 1940s by a handful of University of Denver professors, who were in need of moving their growing families out of the Quonset huts and Butler units that DU provided for faculty housing. Byron Johnson, Eugene Link, Lloyd Saltzman, and architect and DU professor Eugene Sternberg were the brilliant minds behind this project. With a very low budget, these men looked for 10+ acres of land to build modest sized homes on. On April of 1950 they broke ground and built homes worth about $12,000 a piece.

The Mile High Housing Cooperative set up FHA financing at 4% for forty years for this co-op due to new federal legislation about cooperative housing, which is the only way that this project was going to see the light of day financially.

The site was designed for community and intimacy while still maintaining homeowner privacy. The curvature of the street on a one way path was designed to slow down cars in the neighborhood. The fire department pushed back on this design, similar to what happened in Arapahoe Acres, one of Sternberg’s other projects, but eventually they came to a compromise on street design.

For 40 years, the homeowners were not allowed to sell their individual homes since they were a part of a collective, but they oftentimes would swap homes with other families based on growing or shrinking family sizes. In the 1980s the mortgage was finally paid off and homes were available to be individually sold. The neighborhood celebrated together by burning the mortgage document, and they reincorporated into the South Dahlia Lane Community.

South Dahlia Lane is still a vibrant, quiet, peaceful, and private community today. Many homes have seen upgrades or creative additions to add some extra space.

Source: Sternberg Blog