Saco Rienk DeBoer

Saco Rienk DeBoer was a Dutch landscape architect and city planner. He was born on September 7, 1883, in Ureterp, Opsterland, Friesland, Netherlands to architect Rienk Kornelius De Boer and avid gardener Antje Dictus Benedictus. He studied engineering and passed the Junior Engineer (surveyor) exam. He went on to study landscape architecture at The Royal Imperial School of Horticulture in Germany. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and returned home to Ureterp where he opened an office. His symptoms worsened in the summer of 1908; on the basis of doctor and family advice he emigrated to the United States in October 1908 to be treated at the Dutch operated Bethesda Sanatarium in Maxwell, NM. In 1909 when Bethesda Sanitarium moved to Denver, he moved with it, planning the landscaping for the new building. He became the official Landscape Architect of Denver from 1910 to 1931. He also designed the planned community of Boulder City, Nevada. In 1919, he joined with another Dutchman, M. Walter Pesman, to form a partnership. Together their projects were many, among them the landscaping of both sides of Speer Boulevard in Denver, and two early and innovative Colorado subdivisions, Bonnie Brae in Denver and The Glens in Lakewood, both of which feature winding streets and multiple small "pocket parks."