Cory-Merrill

Welcome to Cory-Merrill

Cory-Merrill runs from University Boulevard east to Colorado Boulevard, and from Mississippi and Tennessee avenues south to I-25 — a little over two thousand homes in a tidy rectangle east of Washington Park. It was farmland until after the Second World War, when builder Les Tremblay put up small houses here for returning veterans. The neighborhood takes its name from two Denver Public Schools educators, John J. Cory and Louise A. Merrill, and both namesake schools still stand: Cory Elementary, built in 1951, and Merrill Middle School, built in 1953, each designated a Denver Landmark in 1994. Few Denver neighborhoods are so directly shaped by public education — the name, the identity, and the two protected buildings all come from the same place.

What Defines a Cory-Merrill Home

• Two eras on one block. Surviving postwar brick ranches and bungalows next to contemporary custom homes, the product of thirty years of steady replacement.
• Room to build. The original small-footprint houses on standard lots have made this one of Denver's more active redevelopment markets, with average sale prices among the fastest-rising in the city.
• Mid-century landmarks as the local architecture story. Cory Elementary was designed in 1951 by Victor Hornbein, a Denver modernist working under strong Frank Lloyd Wright influence, who later co-designed the Denver Botanic Gardens conservatory.
• Washington Park as the backyard. The neighborhood has no public park of its own; the shared school campus serves as internal green space, and 165 acres of Washington Park begin a few blocks west.

Living in Cory-Merrill

This is a residential neighborhood that trades nightlife for quiet — the nearest dining and retail sit along the edges and in the adjacent Bonnie Brae and Old South Gaylord districts. The Archdiocese of Denver is the largest landowner here, with the St. John Paul II Center and St. John Vianney Theological Seminary occupying a National Register campus complete with outdoor Stations of the Cross. Runners Roost runs a weekly free run club out of the neighborhood, and the state's oldest and largest sailing school operates here, some distance from any water.