The stretch of 32nd Avenue from Zuni to Julian offers restaurants and rooftop views with the skyline behind them.
Head a few more blocks west on that same street, past Julian, past Irving, and the character of 32nd Avenue changes. The rooftop bars thin out. A farmers market sets up folding tables at the corner of Lowell Boulevard. Dogs outnumber tourists. This stretch has a name too, Highland Square, and it runs on a completely different clock than the blocks closer to the river.
If you live here, you already sense this split even if you've never put a name to it. The two stretches of 32nd Avenue have different characters.
Two Streets, One Name
Lower Highland, the LoHi part of the name, sits closest to downtown, dropped into place by the pedestrian bridge at 16th Street that crosses the South Platte. That bridge puts you in the neighborhood in about ten minutes on foot from Union Station, which is exactly why the blocks around it read as a destination. Little Man Ice Cream has been scooping out of its 28-foot steel milk can at 2620 16th Street since 2008, and the line still wraps the building on warm evenings. Linger occupies a converted mortuary a few blocks up, its rooftop patio built around a 1975 GMC RV turned into a bar. Root Down runs its kitchen on wind power, and its weekend brunch remains one of the hardest reservations to land in LoHi. This is the LoHi that shows up in every "best of Denver" list, and it earns the attention.
Highland Square is a different kind of center, with a weekly farmers market and an annual gathering.
A Sunday at Highland Square's Farmers Market
From May 10 through October 25 this year, Highland Square hosts the 32nd Avenue Farmers Market every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the intersection of 32nd and Lowell. It's a modest footprint by farmers market standards, a scatter of tents selling produce, pierogi, and pretzels, live music playing to whoever's sitting on the curb. There's no ticket, no line management, no reservation window that fills three weeks out. You show up, you buy vegetables from someone who grew them, and you walk your dog around the block while the market packs up.
The restaurant corridor and Sunday market offer different ways to experience 32nd Avenue.
One Saturday a Year, the Whole Street Closes
The neighborhood's one big annual gathering also happens on this end of the street. The Highlands Street Fair takes over W. 32nd Avenue between Perry and Irving for a single Saturday in June, and this year's fair landed on June 20th, running 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Live sets from local acts including The Tracers, Cass Clayton Band, and Borrowed Feathers filled the afternoon, and close to 100 vendors lined the street selling art, crafts, and food.
If you missed it this summer, it comes back every June, and the farmers market fills the gap on every Sunday between now and late October.
What's Actually New, and Which End It's On
The corridor keeps adding to itself. Down toward the river, chef Johnny Curiel opened Mezcaleria Alma right beside his original Alma Fonda Fina, extending his CDMX-inspired menu into a full mezcal and spirits program. The Hampton Social, a coastal-leaning restaurant and bar with a skyline-view patio, landed in the same stretch. Both are excellent additions.
Further out toward Highland Square, the newest name is Nana's, a recent arrival serving handmade dumplings and Xiao Long Bao that's become one of the more talked-about additions to the West Highland food scene.
The Street Ties It Together, Even If the Two Halves Don't Match
None of this means LoHi and Highland Square are separate neighborhoods pretending to be one. They share a street, a name, and plenty of residents who move easily between both ends depending on the night. LoHi and Highland Square offer different experiences along 32nd Avenue: restaurants near the bridge, a farmers market at Lowell, and an annual street fair.
Walk the whole length of it sometime, from the bridge at 16th down past Little Man's milk can, past Linger and Root Down, and keep going until the rooftop bars give way to the market tents at Lowell. That walk connects the two stretches of 32nd Avenue described here.
For those who live along this stretch, or are thinking about which end of it fits how you actually spend a Sunday, Helm Weaver Helm knows both halves of 32nd Avenue well enough to tell you which one you'd actually use. If a conversation about the neighborhood, the market, or what's changing on the block would be useful, book an appointment and we'll talk it through.
