May 21, 2009
LoDo Reverie
Article in
Westword, Night
and Day Section, by Susan Froyd
I remember lower downtown
before it was LoDo, dressed in red brick and
laced together by crumbling viaducts that
rose up between building faces to leave the
sidewalks in looming shadow. Back
then, those now-teeming streets were pure
skid row save for a few bars and warehouses,
some working and others boarded up, and
pretty much anyone who lived down there was
a pioneer...or homeless.
At the time, photographer
Kim Allen was lugging his 35mm camera
through the mean streets, shooting pictures
in places no one else thought to go: in
railroad yards and abandoned buildings,
under viaducts and on the Central Platte
Valley flats. As Allen writes on his
website, "It was the developers, hobos,
pigeons and me."
A selection of those
photos, Chronicles of Lower Downtown
1983-1991, will go on display beginning
tonight during a reception from 5 to 9 p.m.
at RedShift Framing and Gallery, 2266
Broadway.
"I never thought in my
lifetime that I'd ever see that area grow
like it has," Allen says of present-day
LoDo. Though he misses the freedom he
had to work amid the old squalor, he doesn't
mind change and is glad some of the area has
been retained through renovation. "That's
what a city's all about," he notes.
Chronicles continues
through June 15; for information, call
303-293-2991. For more about Allen go to
www.DenverPhotoArchives.com.
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