Correction to "A Family Connection to Lower Downtown Denver "

Apologies for the long absence since my last post. During this period I took several trips, including a visit to Denver where I gathered some additional information about my family's connection to Lower Downtown. I want to supplement and correct a blog post from October 2007 about my maternal Grandfather, Fred Hosken, and Uncle, Edward Hosken's business, the Refrigeration Services Company (RSC).

After the Hosken's purchased RSC, it was located near 15th and Blake Streets in LoDo during a roughly ten year period in the 1940s and 1950s. In my previous blog, I identified the current address of the site where RSC was located as 1517-1521 Blake Street which is today occupied by Wahoos Restaurant. The actual address of the former RSC site is 1507-1509 Blake Street where FedEx Kinko's is located - one storefront south of Wahoos.

See Photos from 1950s of RSC and Today of FedEx Kinko's. on Blake Street in Downtown Denver.

Notice the clear similarities between the storefronts in the two photographs, the size, shape and spacing of the two doors, the display windows and the six second story windows. Also notice the similarities in the size, shape and placement of the door and second story window on the building to the right in both photographs (today Wahoos). This is clearly the same building in both photos.

One of the things which confused me during my previous post was the fact that today there is not a building to the left of FedEx Kinko's, there is a surface parking lot but in the photo above of RSC there is a building. Clearly the building was torn down sometime after the RSC photo was taken. The demolition of the building to the south of RSC, on the corner of 15th and Blake Street probably explains why the addresses on this block have been slightly re-numbered.

A Family Connection to Lower Downtown Denver

As a follow up to my blog "Remembering the Destruction of Denver's Chinatown..." from last Sunday I wanted to write a short entry about my family connections to Lower Downtown Denver. After WWII, in approximately 1945, my maternal Grandfather, Fred Hosken, and Uncle, Ed Hosken, purchased the Refrigeration Service Company (RSC).

RSC was located at 1509-1515 Blake Street near the corner of 15th in LoDo for approximately 10 years until they moved to a York Street location north of Downtown Denver. At the time, Blake Street was part of Denver's Skid Row and every morning when they opened up the shop they had to chase homeless people away from the entryway. This portion of Blake Street had also been part of the original Chinatown District in Downtown Denver (See Areas "a" and "d" in Figure 1 below in the September 30th blog entry on Denver's Chinatown).

Of course, this area is now part of trendy LoDo. The current street address of the old RSC building is now 1517-21 Blake Street and houses Wahoos Restaurant on the ground floor and offices on the upper floors.

Contemporary Photograph of 1517-1521 Blake Street, former location of Refrigeration Services Company in LoDo.




Sadly, both my Grandfather and Uncle have passed away so I can't ask them for stories about the old neighborhood.