Reactivating Denver’s Historic Chinatown Alleyway
Since our founding in 2021, Colorado Asian Pacific United (CAPU) has led efforts to revitalize Denver’s historic Chinatown: a once-vibrant neighborhood destroyed by the 1880 anti-Chinese race riot and erased by decades of exclusionary policy and urban development. Located in the heart of downtown Denver, our Chinatown has existed for nearly one hundred years and is the largest in the interior West. However, if you walk by today, there is little to no evidence of this key part of Denver’s history.
Our Chinatown Alleyway Reactivation project aims to revitalize the alleyway that was the center of Chinatown into a vibrant, accessible, and inclusive cultural destination. The project includes infrastructure improvements, a Chinatown-inspired gateway, consolidated waste facilities, a shipping container museum, permanent historical signage, and artist-designed lantern lighting throughout the alleyway. Together, these elements honor the legacy of Denver’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities, support local businesses, enhance public safety, and create a dynamic public space for learning, connection, and intergenerational healing.
"I hope that people will understand that if we don't learn from the past, other communities like Denver's Chinatown will disappear. With more knowledge people will hopefully embrace, appreciate and want to preserve the past."
Linda Lung
Chinatown Bollards
The Chinatown Bollards are the first step of physically transforming the Chinatown Alley. The public art piece turns 8 traffic bollards into a walking timeline that combines past and present through poetry, shape, and color. Each bollard is painted with a year corresponding to the history of Denver’s Chinatown and important milestones for Colorado’s Asian and Pacific Islander community. Other design elements were created in collaboration with a local youth organization, Asian Girls Ignite. During an art workshop the kids used poetry prompts to ideate words, colors, and symbols for each year of the timeline. The artist used stencils/spray paint to layer imagery on the bollards.
Lighting Up Chinatown
"Lighting Up Denver’s Chinatown" aims to metaphorically and physically reclaim the space that used to be Denver’s Chinatown through overhead lighting in a key location where the ethnic enclave used to exist. The overhead lighting installation will feature culturally inspired lanterns created by local artists through a community-design process with members of the Asian American and broader Denver groups. By honoring the community’s legacy and addressing historical erasure, the initiative fosters cultural preservation, enhances public safety through lighting, and will begin to transform the alley into a vibrant, welcoming space for all.
The lighting installation is slated for completion by 2026.
Partners
Urban Villages
Arts in Society