16th Street Mall

In the 1970s Denver went through a severe economic slump, as businesses and residents left for the suburbs. In 1971 Downtown Denver Inc., since renamed the Downtown Denver Partnership, suggested closing nine blocks to cars. The city, the Partnership, the downtown business improvement district and the Regional Transportation District joined forces behind a pedestrian mall on 16th Street, meant to make public transport easier for downtown and the outer districts while bringing the city centre back to life.

After a nationwide search, the city picked I. M. Pei & Partners, who had already drawn Zeckendorf Plaza in Denver in the 1960s. The partner in charge was Henry N. Cobb, working with the landscape architects Hanna/Olin; contrary to a common belief, the paving pattern is not Pei's own work but that of the team Cobb led. The street opened amid great celebration on 4 October 1982. In 1985 it won a professional award from the American Society of Landscape Architects, and in 1992 it was lengthened from Blake Street to Union Station.

In 2008 the city set out on a rehabilitation that would take sixteen years and was eventually handed to the landscape architects of Dig Studio; full reconstruction of the street began in April 2022. The street took back the plain name 16th Street. The diamond-patterned granite paving was reproduced, and the original light fixtures were restored and modernised.

As first built, the street, 80 feet (about 24 m) wide and a mile (about 1.6 km) long across thirteen blocks between Broadway and Market Street, was split into three zones by its paving, lighting, planting and furniture. A 22-foot (about 6.7 m) pedestrian walk ran down the middle, with trees that gave shade while leaving the shops in view and within reach. On either side lay a 10-foot (3 m) bus lane, set a little lower for safety, then sidewalks widened to 19 feet (about 5.8 m) along the buildings. At each end, a hub took in the suburban buses, whose riders changed to the mall's free shuttles to cross downtown, which halved bus traffic in the city centre.

The square pavers of charcoal grey, light grey and Colorado red granite, set diagonally, made a diamond pattern recalling a rattlesnake's skin; busy in the middle, it grew calmer toward the edges so that it would not compete with the facades and shop windows. The trees, honey locusts and red oaks, stood right within the pattern. Lanterns drawn for the street, topped with acrylic globes, lit it as daylight faded.

The rehabilitation turned the central walk into a bus lane and folded the old lanes into the sidewalks, leaving two broad pedestrian walkways with room for outdoor gatherings. A suspended paving system was laid, and 220 trees of several species (honey locust, elm, oak, maple) took the place of the single-species honey locust planting.

A public street in downtown Denver, it can be walked freely, from Broadway to Union Station.