Up here in Highland, north of the South Platte River, you are in the elevated streetcar suburb that Denver's aspiring middle class settled in the 1870s and 1880s. The land here rises noticeably above the river bottom, giving residents a view back toward downtown and a sense of separation from the noise of the commercial city below. The Victorian houses lining these streets — Queen Anne cottages, Italianate brick townhouses, foursquare homes with wide front porches — were built by people who had made modest fortunes in the silver and gold economy.
The neighborhood went through the familiar twentieth-century cycle of decline as wealthier residents moved further out, followed by the arrival of working-class and immigrant families, and then the rediscovery that began in the 1990s. Today Highland is one of Denver's most sought-after residential neighborhoods, known for its intact Victorian streetscapes, the restaurants along 32nd and Tennyson Streets, and the elevation that still frames the same view of downtown and the mountains that original residents paid a premium to enjoy.