For nearly 30 years, John Hayden and Keith Pryor have lived a block away from a small structure with boarded-up windows, crumbling brick and a link to the Beat Generation.
“You walk by it every day and think what that might be,” Hayden said.
The building at 2558 Champa St. has been on Denver’s formal list of “neglected and derelict” buildings — which are considered unsafe, a nuisance or habitually in violation of city codes — since 1999. That’s longer than any other structure in the city.
For five years, Hayden and Pryor have been working to change that. Next year, the duo plan to open a gelato shop there, which will embrace the building’s most famous former resident.
In the early 1930s, 2558 Champa St. was a two-chair barbershop, and also the cramped home of an elementary-school-age Neal Cassady and his family. Cassady slept on a dirt floor addition at the back of the 400-square-foot structure, which is sandwiched between two homes and shares a wall with one.
Cassady’s parents, Neal and Maude, separated in 1932, and he moved elsewhere shortly after. But the home reappeared when he became a writer.
“In this sad little shop so filled with contention, Neal and Maude shared the last year of their pitiful marriage,” he wrote in his posthumous 1971 autobiography “The First Third.”
Cassady spent his formative years “among the hundreds of isolated creatures who haunted the streets of lower downtown Denver.
“I explored, mostly alone but sometimes with another boy or two, all over the ground that separates downtown from North Denver. Mainly it was the banks of the Platte that provided the flexuous corridor for my travels,” he wrote.
In his twenties, Cassady became friends with Jack Kerouac, a progenitor of the Beat Generation. The literary movement with deep Denver roots questioned societal norms of the time and was incorporated into the larger counterculture of the 1960s.
“It was the way that Neal wrote that inspired Jack Kerouac to write ‘On The Road.’ And I like to think that the way that Neal wrote and the way he spoke … came directly out of living in this neighborhood, because it’s almost like a spoken form of jazz,” Hayden said.
Hayden, 52 years old and a realtor, and his husband Pryor, a 54-year-old contractor, have rehabbed and redeveloped numerous properties in Curtis Park’s historic district. Pryor serves as the chair for the Curtis Park Design Review Committee, an advisory board that reviews alterations to historic buildings.
“If you look at East Wash Park, or if you look at Observatory Park or Bonnie Brae, they’ve lost almost 90 percent of their housing stock,” he said.
“We think that in order to maintain the cultural diversity of the neighborhood, it’s essential that the architecture be preserved,” Hayden said.
The pair have hosted Beat Generation tours since 2013, stopping at spots such as the Rossonian hotel in Five Points. With help from neighbors, they redeveloped the property across the street from 2558 Champa St. That lot was once home to The Snowden apartments, where Cassady “lived out the turbulent school year ending in June 1933,” although it was just a vacant lot when Hayden and Pryor got it.
In 2019, a friend of Hayden called him with a request. He said that he had purchased a house at 2560 Champa, which came with the smaller structure next door. Hayden knew what it was right away and said he’d buy it. Public records show that he and Pryor bought the building that April for $150,000.
“There was a dirt floor and a lot of junk and pink walls,” Hayden said of the building when they bought it. “The roof was kind of caving in.”
The structural integrity was in question, and its utilities beneath it needed attention. Pryor said that the shared water lines between his building and the nearby homes were so messed up that there was a seven-foot trench inside the structure.
“We were getting a water bill that was, like $1,000 or something,” Hayden said.
The portion of the structure where Cassady once slept had to be torn down due to its poor condition. The couple turned that area into an outdoor patio.
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After years of discussions with the city and permitting, as well as pandemic-induced delays, the plan is to restore the original storefront and convert the inside into the gelato shop, which will hopefully open in the spring. Pryor and Hayden expect to spend about $70,000 on renovations.
The couple took classes with gelato manufacturer Carpigiani in Chicago. They’re planning a second location where 33rd, Curtis and Downing meet, called Thick’s Gelato and Chocolates.
But at 2558 Champa St., the gelato shop — which will also offer books such as “The First Third” for sale — will have the only name that felt appropriate.
Cassady’s