RiNo, the River North Arts District where you are now, transformed faster than almost any other neighborhood in Denver, going from industrial wasteland to one of the most photographed neighborhoods in the Mountain West in less than fifteen years. The blocks north of downtown along the South Platte were industrial through most of the twentieth century: warehouses, meatpacking plants, auto body shops, and rail yards. As those industries left in the 1990s, cheap rents attracted artists and small manufacturers.
By the early 2000s enough creative energy had accumulated that a group of artists and property owners branded it the River North Arts District. The murals covering virtually every wall in RiNo — from intimate doorway paintings to multi-story commissions by internationally known street artists — began as guerrilla art and became a deliberate civic strategy. The Denver Mural Festival has brought artists from around the world, and the concentration of large-scale public art here is now among the densest in the country.
Craft breweries followed the artists, and RiNo is now home to more breweries per square mile than almost anywhere in America.