Congress Park, the residential neighborhood southeast of Cheesman Park, developed in the first decades of the twentieth century as the streetcar extended Denver's eastward reach. The neighborhood was platted primarily between 1900 and 1925, and the housing stock reflects the architectural taste of that era: Craftsman bungalows, Denver Squares — the distinctive two-story brick houses with flat or hipped roofs found throughout Denver's older neighborhoods and representing the city's own vernacular residential type — and the occasional larger Colonial Revival home built for professionals. The neighborhood takes its name from Congress Park itself, a small park with a swimming pool that has been a neighborhood anchor since 1906.
Congress Park is separated from Cheesman Park to the north and the Botanic Gardens to the east by just a few blocks, giving residents walking access to three significant park and garden spaces. The area's independent retail identity along the 12th Avenue and Madison Street intersection has been maintained by generations of small business owners who have resisted the chain homogenization that has come for so many Denver commercial corridors.