Five Points, the Harlem of the West

Northeast of downtown Denver lies Five Points, the city's first predominantly African American neighborhood and the heart of its jazz history. In the nineteen thirties, forties, and fifties, the district was home to more than fifty bars and clubs, and it earned the nickname the Harlem of the West. The greatest names in American music played its stages, among them Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and Miles Davis.

At the center of it all stood the Rossonian Hotel, opened in nineteen twelve as the Baxter Hotel and renamed in nineteen twenty-nine. The Rossonian's lounge became one of the most important jazz venues between St. Louis and Los Angeles.

Its prominence was rooted partly in injustice. Because the segregated white-owned hotels downtown refused to house Black performers, touring musicians stayed and played in Five Points instead, and the neighborhood became a destination in its own right. Duke Ellington is said to have spent an entire summer there.

The community that grew up around the music was a full one, with churches, newspapers, doctors, and businesses owned and run by Black residents at a time when much of the city was closed to them. Five Points was not only a place where great music passed through. It was a place where a community built its own institutions and its own life.

The vitality of that era left a deep cultural mark on Denver, and the Rossonian building still stands as a landmark of that history.