Our Parish and the Globeville Community

Part 1 | Part 2

For more than one hundred years, the life and destiny of Holy Transfiguration congregation and those of the Globeville neighborhood have been inextricably linked. In 1888 some Polish families settled near what was to become the Globe Smelter and, soon after, the Village of Globeville came into being. Shortly thereafter, groups of "Volga Germans" began to make a home in the region. When, in the following decade, immigrants arrived from the Carpathian and Balkan regions of Eastern Europe, it was to Globeville and the jobs that were available there that they were drawn.

By 1898, when the congregation of Transfiguration of Christ rented space from one of the German sects and began construction of its Temple, the three tiny towns of Globeville, Argo and Garden Place had merged together to form an incorporated town. This Town of Globeville had its own power plant, jail, police department and town council. By the early 20th Century, the city fathers of Globeville agreed to accept incorporation into the City and County of Denver, upon the promise that city services and amenities would be extended to the residents' former town.

Globeville, now a Denver neighborhood, became the home of new arrivals from Europe of almost every nationality. Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Poles, Volga Dutch, and Carpatho-Rus (also called Slavish, Ukrainian, Ugro-Rus, etc.) settled in clearly identifiable sections of Globeville, centered around the Austrian and Polish Roman Catholic churches, the Orthodox Church and the German Reformed and Lutheran churches.

The neighborhood, the neighbors and their respective Churches prospered, for the most part, until the depression of 1929. Transfiguration had suffered an earlier trauma of its own, as a result of the Russian Revolution, which caused a cut off of mission money and resulted in the Church building being mortgaged and lost for a time to the "Living Church" sect.

When the Great Depression struck, many residents lost their jobs in the smelters, brick yards and slaughterhouses. Families had to pull their children out of school after sixth grade to supplement family income in low paying jobs. Summers: from the Sunday after Pascha to Halloween, was a time for wives and children to migrate to the far off town of Littleton where they would work contracted sugar beat fields.

World War II saw most of the adult men of Globeville either enlisting or drafted into their nation's service. From our Holy Transfiguration congregation alone, 35 men served while those wives and mothers who had begun to return to their homes after the worst of the depression now had to return to the factories and packing houses to support the effort and help feed their families.

By this time, Globeville had begun to exercise some political clout through the efforts of attorney Andrew Wysowatcky who, with a grade school education, had nevertheless managed to put himself through law school and had risen to the rank of Denver City and County Administrator. However, after the war ended, even attorney Wysowatcky could not stop the ravages of mindless and willful destruction, which the Denver city fathers conspired to inflict upon the neighborhood.

In the late forties and earlier fifties, despite the petitions of 20,000 Denver residents, the Valley Highway I-25 and I-70 bisected and re-bisected the old neighborhood, destroying much of the best housing stock, forcing the relocation of many second and third generation Globeville families, and subsequently causing the loss of amenities, such as a pharmacy and grocery, which are necessary to the stability of a residential community.

By the end of the 1950s, most of the parishioners of Transfiguration Parish, both older families and those who had arrived in Denver as refugees from Europe in the aftermath of WWII, were living outside of the neighborhood. The ethnic makeup of the remaining neighborhood was rapidly shifting from homeowners of Northern and Eastern European origin to Hispanic renters.

Meanwhile, Denver began to rezone whole areas of Globeville from residential to commercial and even industrial use. The city bought up vacant and undeveloped property and allowed it to go to uncontrolled vegetation. City services such as street cleaning, zoning and codes enforcement and maintenance of sidewalks, streets and recreational facilities ground to a halt. Gradually, both Globeville residents and city officials came to believe that the neighborhood's days as a residential community were numbered.

On three separate occasions, during the Rectorates of Frs. George Benigsen, Paul Ziatyk and Andrew Harrison, plans were made to relocate the parish in either the western or southern suburbs. Property was actually purchased in south-central Denver, but the parish could never form a consensus to actually abandon their historic Temple. Meanwhile, both of the German churches ceased to function in Globeville.

During Fr. Paul Ziatyk's tenure, the parish played an important part in the "Model Cities" project, which brought some attention to the plight of Globeville and also provided a day care center for families.

In 1975, the city unveiled its "Alternative Proposal" for Globeville, which called for the demolition of the neighborhood and the development of an industrial park on the site. The people of Globeville succeeded in derailing this plan, but it would be more than a decade before they would be able to offer a plan of their own.

History of Our Parish | Part 2