The Wheatley Flats
Location
Denver, CO
Completed
2016
Client
Palisade Partners
Fabricators
Ad Light Group
Awards
2018 City of Denver, Mayor’s Design Award
2017 Downtown Denver Partnership, Downtown Denver Award
The Wheatley Flats is a new multi-family community in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood along the historic Welton Street corridor. This elegant brick building features a combination of apartments, walk-up town homes and retail on the ground floor. The Wheatley is one of the first redevelopments along the Welton Corridor, signaling a boom for one of Denver’s most iconic main streets and required signage to fit the well-designed building and notable neighborhood. ArtHouse created exterior signage based on the established brand for the development, looking at historic precedent to provide the building with the appropriate context and to add to the character of the charming Historic District.
With elegant halo-illumination in varying brand colors, ArtHouse was able to differentiate between the various uses of the project. This motif was carried through to address numerals with colored returns to subtly emphasize the differences between the flats, retail and townhomes. As part of Palisade Partners efforts to develop properties that are community oriented, this project received funding from the Denver Urban Renewal Authority or DURA to provide for public art on the site. ArtHouse Designed a sculpture made of stacked metal blocks, each with a routed, internally illuminated story running from top to bottom explaining the history of the project site.
The Wheatley derives its name from the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA that historically stood on this site. Phyllis Wheatley was an African-American slave and one of the first published female and African-American poets. The DURA sculpture that ArtHouse created tells the story of the Wheatley YWCA, the Five Points neighborhood, Phyllis Wheatley herself and even includes one of her poems. The sculpture was designed to encourage viewers to move around the form, reading each side and seeing the shapes seem to shift and change. When illuminated, the sculpture casts dramatic illuminated letters across the ground, providing increased lighting for quiet 25th Street and encouraging visitors and passersby to explore the neighborhood’s side streets as well.