Historic Denver’s Annual Awards
For over 50 years, Historic Denver has brought together our city’s civic and business leaders, design professionals, respected craftsmen, and local advocates to celebrate our city’s heritage and built environment. Historic Denver’s Annual Dinner & Awards Program honors the individuals and projects that highlight Denver’s cultural history and anchor the future.
Honorees Are Selected From the Following Categories:
Community Preservation Awards – Given to four projects, institutions, or community efforts that have made an exceptional contribution to the preservation of Denver’s heritage. These projects exemplify high quality restoration or rehabilitation, the careful consideration of the city’s historic fabric, and a commitment to community.
Remix Award – Given to one or two projects each year that creatively combine the old and new. Typically these projects involve historic or existing structures with significant additions or alterations that add to, and do not detract, from the building’s story or the community’s appreciation of the structure.
Individual Awards – Historic Denver presents three individual awards each year:
- Ann Love Award – Honors a person who does not consider themselves a traditional preservationists but has shown initiative, creativity, and commitment in preserving the history, culture and architecture of Denver.
- Margaret “Molly” Brown Award – Honors someone who lives in Margaret “Molly” Brown’s spirit today by devoting many years to civic life in all its forms, actively engaging in politics, philanthropy, arts and culture, and historic preservation.
- Keystone Award – Honors a person who has made a significant contribution to historic preservation over a career or lifetime. In some instances, this individual award may be given to a couple, a partnership, or a specific group of people.
Selection Process & Criteria:
A jury comprised of current/former Historic Denver Board Members, past award winners, and friends of the organization reviews each nomination and recommends a slate of award winners to be approved by the full board of trustees. Historic Denver takes into account each nomination, as well as the collection of honorees in making final decisions, seeking to ensure that a range of project types and efforts are included, and that our organization is upholding its diversity, equity, inclusion and access values. Nominations are also considered based on the following criteria:
- Impact a project or person has had on the Denver community, (i.e., its benefit to the city), degree to which the project serves as an example of excellence in historic preservation and influences others to follow-suit.
- Degree to which the project or person supports diversity, equity, inclusion, access, or environmental sustainability
- Innovative solutions to preservation including, but not exclusive to: Creative partnerships or community engagement efforts, original programming, thoughtful adaptive reuse, best practices in sustainability or technologies that mitigate climate change, cultural sustainability or heritage conservation, and/or creative financing or funding sources
Once we have our final list of honorees, we begin contacting them individually in June to confirm acceptance of the award before publicly announcing them by the end of August / early September. Check back later this summer to see who will be honored in November at our annual awards gala!
2024 Award Nominations Begin May 1st
Sponsorship Opportunities:
Contact our Director of Development, Jay Homstad, at 303-534-5288 ext. 26, or jay@historicdenver.org