1898 Denver CO by Pen & Picture - Cosmopolitan City

Above: Equitable Building

DENVER AS A COSMOPOLITAN CITY

Then from a mixture of all kinds began
That het'rogeneous thing -- a Denver man.
Fate fumbled them together, God knows how;
Whate'er they were, they're all for Denver now.
--Defoe (slightly varied. )

Denver, judged by the nativity of her citizens, is one of the most American cities in the Union, and at the same time a cosmopolitan community.

The following figures from the U. S. Census of 1890 show the percentage of American born citizens of various cities:

CITY	%	CITY	%
Denver	76.14	Jersey City	67.27
Cincinnati	75.95	Buffalo	65.00
Alleghany	75.18	Boston	64.73
Omaha	75.05	Minneapolis	63.24
St. Louis	74.57	Cleveland	62.85
Philadelphia	74.26	Milwaukee	61.08
Rochester, N.Y.	70.29	Detroit	60.31
Providence, R.I.	69.45	St. Paul	60.06
Newark, N. J.	69.44	Chicago	59.02
Pittsburg	69.29	New York	57.77
Brooklyn	67.54	San Francisco	57.59

According to the U. S. Census Report for 1890 Denver had 106,713 inhabitants (now 165,000) of whom 81,249 were native born Americans and 25,464 were foreign born.

Of the 81,249 native born Americans only 15,282 were born in Colorado, being children and young people.

Above: Business Blocks

The following figures from the U. S. Census Reports of 1890 show where the bulk of the population of Denver originally came from :

CITY	TOTAL	CITY	TOTAL
New York	8,545	Massachusetts	2,148
Illinois	7,623	Michigan	2,021
Ohio	6,731	Wisconsin	1,963
Pennsylvania	5,477	Kentucky	1,596
Iowa	4,899	Nebraska	1,381
Missouri	4,577	Maine	934
Indiana	3,093	Virginia	855
Kansas	2,662	Connecticut	807

and the remainder from other states.

The nativity of the 25,464 foreign born citizens of Denver in 1890 was:

Germany	5,373	Sweden	3,622
Great Britain	5,061	Canada	2,672
Ireland	4,216	Italy	608

and the remainder from other countries.

It is only just to state that quite a number of these foreign born citizens came to this country in early childhood and are as American in sentiment and principle as if their ancestors had come over in the Mayflower.

The eleven pages of portraits scattered through this book comprising sixty-six representative Denver citizens, men and women, and giving the state or country of their nativity, amply demonstrates the truly cosmopolitan character of Denver as a community.

The average citizen of Denver, is ahead of the average citizen of the United States, for the reasons: 1. The persons who voluntarily left their former homes and came West, as a rule, were more enterprising than those who remained. 2. Many people of culture and position migrated to Denver on account either of their own health or the health of some member of the family. 3. The migrating so far West involved the possession of financial means on the part of the emigrant and has ever had a tendency to deter the very poor and shiftless who, whether native or foreign born, consequently remain on the Atlantic seaboard.