Downtown Denver’s streets follow a diagonal grid while the remainder of Denver’s streets follow a true-directional grid. Multi-directional intersections resulted at those points where Downtown streets intersected with neighboring areas. In 1881, the Stout Street Herdic Coach Line published its route map labeling the stop at the intersection of Welton Street, 27^th Street, Washington Street and East 26^th Avenue simply as Five Points. Over the years, the Five Points moniker endured and the City of Denver’s official name for the neighborhood became Five Points. The area is also referred to as Curtis Park by many locals.  

More so than any other Denver neighborhood, Five Points has always been a mixed-income neighborhood of cultural diversity. The City’s upper business class was originally attracted to the Curtis Park area with its open space and street car connection to Downtown. Between 1870 and 1893, the population of Denver grew over 2,000% from approximately 5,000 to over 100,000. The Five Points neighborhood absorbed much of this growth by attracting waves of immigrants filling the worker needs of the growing railroad and related industry in the area. By the mid-1880s, the newly developing Capitol Hill area attracted many of Curtis Park’s wealthy families to relocate. By the 1920s, Five Points had become a predominantly blue collar working class neighborhood with an increase in multi-unit dwellings.

In the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Five Points was home to over 50 jazz clubs and bars attracting jazz greats Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton, and Duke Ellington as they traveled between the East Coast and the West Coast. Five Points was referred to as the “Harlem of the West” because of its rich Jazz Culture. 

Denver’s Juneteenth Music Festival, commemorating the 1865 Emancipation Proclamation, is held annually in Five Points and attracts over 100,000 people. Five Points is also home to the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center and the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library.

Today, the Five Points and Curtis Park neighborhood enjoys a rich history with three designated historic districts -- Clements, San Rafael and Glenarm Place. Neighborhood housing is as mixed as its historical heritage. Duplexes, Victorian mansions, two-story Denver Squares, Queen Anne’s, and flat-roofed row-houses can all be found on the same block. Give its convenient proximity to Downtown, Five Points continues to renew, restore and rehabilitate itself.