
Dana Hudkins Crawford, a colorful, irreverent and tenacious woman who spent much of her life preserving Denver’s architectural past and then shared her expertise to help others preserve and reuse historic buildings across Colorado, died Thursday, January 23, her son Jack Crawford said. She was 93.
Born and raised in Kansas, she came to Denver in 1953 to work in public relations and advertising. While studying graduate-level business courses at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she became enamored with New England villages and their town squares intended as gathering places.
She felt her adopted hometown was lacking similar places to meet. With no experience in real estate and with no money of her own, she persuaded a group of friends to purchase and renovate the 1400 block of Larimer Street before it could be flattened by the Denver Urban Renewal Authority — she referred to it as the Denver Urban Removal Authority — which changed the face of downtown Denver in the early 1960s.

Unprecedented and unimagined at the time, by 1965 Crawford had purchased nearly the entire block of wobbly buildings, rebuilt some, repainted all to create Larimer Square. Despite the skeptics and naysayers, lines of customers soon stretched down to Market Street, anxious to get into Your Father’s Mustache beer hall, the Bratskellar German restaurant and the 1421 nightclub.
She experienced Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice with the Oxford. Typically, though, she found humor in her dilemmas, referring to them as Chapter 22. Today, the elegant and mostly full hotel is home of the moody art deco Cruise Room bar, which serves Crawford’s favorite cocktail, a dirty martini.
Her vision for Denver’s future was clear and strong, as she began preserving the Ice House on Wynkoop Street, and transforming red brick warehouses filled with pigeons and broken windows into elegant residential lofts. She and others saved most of the older buildings of lower downtown Denver, from Larimer Street down to Union Station, from demolition. The Denver Post columnist Dick Kreck dubbed the area “LoDo.”
Crawford’s vision grew wider, down to Trinidad, where she significantly preserved parts of downtown; to Pueblo, to Leadville and to the abandoned Argo Gold Mine in Idaho Springs, for which she helped shape plans to create a hotel, restaurant and hillside residential community.
Her final efforts in Denver resulted in the preservation and transformation of the Denver Union Station railroad terminal at 17th and Wynkoop streets. Reconstruction included a new hotel in the top two floors, which her partners reverentially named The Crawford Hotel, a tribute to her work and leadership (and over her objections).
Walter Isenberg, co-founder of Sage Hospitality Group and one of Crawford’s partners in the Union Station Alliance, called her “a true visionary and a powerful force in historic preservation.”
“Dana’s mighty spirit will continue to live on as people enjoy spending time at Denver Union Station, Larimer Square, The Crawford and The Oxford,” he said. “Not only was she a business partner, but also a dear friend and confidant. I am blessed to have had Dana in my life.”
She was appointed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation board for more than 10 years, five of which she served on the executive committee. She received almost every possible award for her preservation work, and donated generously back to the community.
Her husband, John, died in 1985. She is survived by her four sons: Jack, of Denver; Peter, of Boulder; Tom, of New York; and Duke, of Mexico.
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