OPEN HOUSE
Authentic Victorian home built in 1900.
July 21, 2024
Sunday 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
5712 sq. ft. 5 bedrooms. 3 bathrooms.
Attic office
Finished basement.
Formal parlor. Large dining room.
Small library and upstairs sitting rooms.
Mahogany floors and stairs. Updated kitchen.
Many original fixtures and charming vintage touches throughout.
Mature landscaping.
Unique and original royal blue tiled roof.
Premium location near historical downtown Denver
PRICED TO SELL !!!
July 15, 2024
Like a forgotten crone getting a makeover, I’m being polished, dusted and swept anew. Am I to be bought at last? Resigned to a death-dealing bulldozer, I had feared my hidden secret might die with me; to vanish into dirt and rubble with my last heard sound a mechanical assassin’s growl.
July 21, 2024
An “Open House” invades me with no proper calling cards. My wide-open, double doors let in any stranger who wishes to wander in and gawk. I disapprove of this intrusion and a real estate agent in red high-heeled shoes and take-charge voice. Red? A brazen hussy! She hands out business cards in my foyer like a ticker tape parade, urging nosy visitors to poke around my nooks and crannies. Her overly enthusiastic greetings remind me of a cat sniffing around for a plump mouse.
Lurking between my foyer and parlor window, she’s a huntress in sharp stilettos seeking her prey. A young couple stand on the sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder in front of my gate. She zeroes in on matching wedding rings and proximity to each other. Ah, youth. To me, they look besotted. Curious. Idealistic.
Armed with a homing pigeon’s razor-sharp radar and a practiced smile, she scuttles out my front door to perch on the porch. She moves an empty flower pot cover a warped floor slat near my front step. She waits on my porch. Ready to pounce.
Looking up at my soaring evergreens, the young couple speak in hushed, urgent voices and discuss how best to appear. Of course, I listen.
“How on earth can we even think of buying it?”
“Should we play it as if not interested? Or, maybe interested, but admit we’re hesitant over renovation costs?”
“Low-ball the price right away? Take our time poking through? What should we even look for?”
“Oh, oh, oh. it’s so darling! Perfect. But how can we afford it?”
The husband turns to his wife to point inward past my derelict front gate.
“Well, just look at this yard, honey! Someone had quite an iris garden. Wonder if they’ll grow with proper watering?”
Yes. Amazing what a little care could do for my discarded garden. Iris, evergreens, even the prima donna roses bushes could flourish once again.
His wife reads aloud from the realtor’s flyer, “‘mature landscaping.’ Quite so, the evergreens are huge, magnificent! And blue roof tiles! I so hope they’re original.”
They see me not for what I am today, but what I can be again. Come in! Please, come in! I’m ever so timeworn but make me come alive again. Enter my weedy yard, walk up my creaking porch steps and find a wonderful secret. Please come in and fall in love with me.
Still pausing on the sidewalk, they’re unconscious of both heads pensively nodding up and down, musing on possibilities. But the wife drops the flyer down to her side. Her enthusiasm vanishes. “We can’t afford it.”
“Honey, I say we at least look. Besides, it can’t hurt. We just can’t actually buy it.”
Leaving their observation post on my sidewalk, they edge through my crooked gate, pass by my neglected iris beds, ignore many cracks in my stone walkway, overlook faded paint and prop up one of my listless iron fence posts. I like them. It’s a telling gesture, indicative of mental ownership and not lost on the lurking realtor.
The real estate agent waves her manicured hand with manufactured cheer. Sporting a grin worthy of an ebullient game-show host, she comes down my porch stairs to greet them, oozing charm and ready to seal the deal of what is behind Door #1.
She trails them through my gaping front door into my parquet foyer, outwardly nonchalant but ready to sell. They admire my magnificent mahogany staircase, welcoming and warm, nodding their heads slightly. The realtor purrs, “Welcome to our Open House. Shall we start at the very top and work our way down? Tell me, what do you think of this incredible mahogany staircase?”
The young couple walk up my staircase carved with swirls and rosettes fashionable in 1900. Other lookers are exploring my stair landing. One self-appointed critic sporting a Rockies t-shirt and baseball cap declares, “Geez, look at that dinky window. So stupid, odd-looking. Totally impractical, I mean, really, who can even see out of it?”
The husband and wife study the small oval window when they walk past my first landing, tuning out the realtor’s prattle. Early in the 1900’s, one might have seen the eldest daughter peeping through with excited eyes. Eager to spot the ice delivery boy unseen, being “dinky,” worked fine for her. Rushing from the window, she’d perch herself on my porch arrayed in her Sunday hat, a confection of pink tulle and flirtatious silk flowers.
The Rockies fan continues his appraisal. “So ridiculous, all wasted space. Windows should be big enough to see. I swear, if this cousin to a porthole was bigger, well, obviously, makes more sense. Ah, crap! Broken. And how long has that been ignored? Decades, I’d bet.”
The wife traces her finger on my 124-year-old glass, avoiding a jagged edge. My beveled pane was shattered from a hurled rock the previous month. “When, I mean, if, we can fix this, could a windowpane be found that is authentic?”
I like her even more.
The Rockies fan’s critique bothers me. When did a house become a birdcage for all to peer into? When an infant daughter died one winter day, when a beloved son didn’t come home from the war to end all wars or when a toddler ran to my door to get away from a bad man, I was a sanctuary for my families, not a peepshow.
Outside my broken window, the young couple hear footsteps on the stone pathway. A woman’s voice gives a snort.
“Good grief! Can you believe these gawd-awful roof tiles? What architect in his right mind used these? Turn of the century? Victorian house? I don’t know, they seem so, um, so modern. Must not be original.” Her companion agrees, sounding fully offended at my blue-tiled roof.
But my weathered blue tiles are original. And unique. Ask the sweating draft horses who pulled them up Colfax Avenue to my corner lot. It was a sweltering day in July 1899 on newly plotted Ashville Street.
People have admired my eye-catching roof tiles for decades. Generations passing by on foot, horse, roller skates, scooter, bicycle, skateboard, motorcycle and automobile paused to admire its graceful slope and distinguished color. From a letter read aloud in my parlor in the 1960’s, a great-grandson wrote of closing his eyes to picture his home’s roof; just to be anywhere but an ocean away on patrol with his platoon in a Vietnamese jungle.
Upon sweeping mahogany curves of my hallway banister, hands of all sizes passed by in both haste and leisure. It’s a marvel, this shiny, worn testament to the human need for movement. The husband comments on how the century-old shine on my newels and carvings are calming like a gently worn blanket or comforting like a favorite old book. I’m liking him more and more.
At the top of my stairs, a man shrugs at the realtor. “I like it from the outside but not so much from the inside.”
I‘m reminded of a daughter’s first serious beau in 1917, who was quite handsome to look at but rotten to his core. Are people so different from houses? Many appear quite fetching on the outside, yet, quite ugly once inside. Like houses, they lack inner charm and graciousness.
The husband and wife nudge each other and whisper.
“Bravo, one less possible buyer to bid against.”
“Maybe the price will come down.”
“If we do a bit of research and find a skilled craftsperson, this blue tile roof could shake free from its current infirmities.”
Take a chance and make a bid! I’ll share my secret with you!
The couple walk down the hall into one of my bedrooms. Loud enough to be heard through my open window, a man checking out my garage yells to his wife in the backyard, “Hon, dang! Was there a fire in the garage? Check out these scorch marks. See, there, along the back wall. Ah, hah! Yeah, what’s that all about?”
His voice has the triumphant timbre of a detective revealing the culprit in a weekly who-done-it crime show. “Look closely, sweetheart, I bet you’ll see lots of half-assed attempts to hide problems for whoever buys this white elephant.”
I wish the burn marks were far worse. I don’t wish this opinionated Open House blowhard to live here.
Up in the bedroom, the embarrassed realtor points out my vintage wainscoting to distract the couple. The summer of 1933: I remember love letters burned in a fury. In 1951, more scorch marks were added when a great-grandson was lazy in storing turpentine-soaked rags.
I enjoy seeing myself through the couple’s eyes. Funny. Memories make me feel younger. The threat of a deadly bulldozer seems far away.
The husband and wife reach my attic with the tag-a-long realtor. Turning to the right, a cozy office is easily reached at the top of the stairs. On the left, my true attic is behind a door usually kept shut. Decades of forgotten boxes, old clothes and obsolete junk are jammed in dusty refuge throughout my attic’s nooks. To call my attic congested is kind. It’s a stuffed time capsule started in 1900.
“I’m sure you two will appreciate the market value of a large attic!” The realtor opens my left door. “And, of course, this marvelous old house has generous storage area. Let’s have a quick look-see!”
She is unwelcome, as if she opened my private diary. Amid the jammed disarray, is an abandoned metal refrigerator in the farthest corner, pocked with rust and agape in ignoble retirement. Generations of mice delighted in cavernous hospitality and raised numerous babies in its cozy ice bin. Amazingly, this relic still carried a merest whiff of cleaning bleach. Near the forgotten refrigerator is a dusty metal chest, just begging to be opened if one could reach it. The wife ventures a few steps towards it into the room.
“So mysterious. What hidden treasure lies inside you? I’m dying to explore this entire attic. Like a time machine of the last 100 years.”
I know the secret held for her in the metal box. And I can do nothing.
She spots a sad little red wagon, perched on a stack of old quilts. It has an odd dent in the middle as if it once held something too heavy. I remember when that dent became permanent. A young man lost in depression and flashbacks of death. Iron Cross insignia. Tanks. Explosions. Screams. A popular new song played on his record player, “I’ll be Home for Christmas.” The rope on my chandelier while his body swung in a slow rotation. Not all my memories are happy.
When generations of cobwebs flutter onto her oh-so-perfect bob, the realtor hides her grimace and quickly says, “I say we take a look-see at the darling attic office. You’ll love it, just simply love it! I do believe the original owner used it for many years. Come see, come see! An inspiring view of the evergreens from this office window! What a view!”
They follow her when she opens my right door. An old-fashioned roll-top desk sits in my otherwise empty room. The husband drops his guard to consider future office potential and where to drill an appropriately unobtrusive hole for computer cables. The realtor drones on once again about “incredible historic value of the house,” He murmurs to himself. “Yeah, just what I need. File cabinets on that wall, printer over there, even space for my soccer banners.”
The wife glances away during the realtor’s spiel to see her husband mentally rearranging his current office furniture for my attic alcove. I know the sales pitch is overdone. This annoying realtor should just stop talking and lower the asking price significantly.
The wife then drops her guard. “Funny, it just spoke to me. People say that happens with houses. I want to live here. Bring it back to life. Lots of work. And money. But, oh, how super special it will be.”
You both belong here. Tendrils of memories are rising like smoke within me.
Back on my narrow second-floor hallway, the couple and fellow house hunters bump into each other when they pass from bedrooms and bathrooms. A condescending baritone voice catches all their attention. “First, I’ll tell you, this floor plan. Too complicated, too many rooms.”
This critical tone comes from a self-important man standing in my hallway, blocking people from passing. He postures like a confident expert, hooking both hands on his belt loops and rocking on his heels. “Before I’d even consider buying it, I’d want some quotes on a complete gutting.”
I shudder.
The husband gives him a pitying look. The wife moves closer to him to murmur, “We must save it.”
When I was built, more rooms meant more impressive. One of my rental families in recent years gushed over a new housing invention called a ‘great room.” To this I say, nothing’s truly new in so-called home innovations. I have on excellent authority a single great room was exactly what desperately poor people had with one-room cabins.
The realtor is delayed with other house hunters. On their own, the husband and wife explore my second floor again. He makes a verbal list as they walk through all my rooms.
“Perfect for a home gym. This could be a TV room. Good size for a toddler playroom. Lots of room for another kid.”
He pauses, looks hesitant, “There’s always our retirement fund. Maybe not use all of it? Just half?”
Now their only possible option to buy is out in the open. Using retirement funds would be a big risk. Just ask the original owner who was desperate to salvage the family savings during the early years of the Great Depression.
The wife takes his hand. “Let’s talk about that later. Nice sunny window for sewing my quilts. Dibs on this one for my home office. This room faces morning sun, nice for our daughter. This small one, perfect for just a yoga mat and sound system. Lots of space for one more kid.”
They walk into one of my bathrooms. “Look, an authentic faucet!”
A well-dressed but disgustingly profane woman sneers from my adjoining sitting room. “Shit, I wonder who lived here? Jesus H. Christ, nothing’s been updated in decades!”
The couple look up in alarm from admiring my ornately scrolled bathroom faucet.
“Besides, this ancient neighborhood is crap. Too old-fashioned. Tacky looking. Let’s go look at that new development in Cherry Creek.”
The loud, opinionated woman with the look of a devoted Botox customer and horrified with anything, God-forbid, old, ends her tirade.
Returning to the object of their admiration, they each give a look of mutual relief my sink’s faucet has escaped modern times.
You like old. Buy me. Please buy me!
Back downstairs, the couple take time to study my parlor, unencumbered by the relentless realtor.
“Mom’s antique tea pots belong right here. Can’t you just see them?” The wife spreads her hand from her little finger and thumb to measure how many might reasonably fit on my mantel shelf. Behind her, the agent passes by with other visitors; but takes a quick satisfied glance at the wife’s actions laying claim to mantle space.
In my dining room, the wife is pleased to see that my original chandelier was rewired and refitted. “I wonder who lived here first? What were family dinners like? Umm, how’d our placemats look in here? Would they do? No. Need something new, but vintage looking. Definitely.”
They reach my basement. Drops of multi-colored oil paint, in hues unrelated to ceilings and walls, are splattered and smeared over much of my basement floor. Amused, they venture to guess as to why my floor bears such evidence.
I know. Those splotches are the legacy of a Depression era passion between a youngest daughter and itinerant portrait painter. Even my humble basement echoes with people who have passed through since 1900.
So far, this Open House hasn’t produced a financially qualified prospect for the realtor to reel into homeownership. I don’t “show well” in the parlance of realtors and mortgage lenders. My loyal, yet justifiably worn, roof eaves yearn for inevitable gravity to retire them from their stations. Once dignified iron fence posts are leaning at tipsy angles and dispirited paint is giving up its partnership with wood. I need this couple to make me theirs; people who see possibilities in my future yet appreciate my past and would transform decrepit, forgotten me to restored life. People for whom breakfast bars, track lighting, multiple jets in a spa-tub and plastic fences aren’t their idea of home.
“Hear that squeak? Yikes, totally ratty old porch. Yup, bet you this old wreck is falling apart. Honey, this is a damn waste of our time.” With that pronouncement, a disinterested couple turn back before going in, only to stop and warn a new house hunter coming through my iron gate. “Total disrepair! Just check out that porch. Absolutely falling down. A bulldozer is the next step for this money pit. Trust us, don’t even bother.”
Poking into every available corner and even a few not readily accessible, two men dressed in polo shirts and clearly pressed khakis whisper to each other as if my rooms are bugged.
“That bathroom wallpaper is ancient. And did you see the water stain behind the antique tub? Probably been there forever.”
That stain has been there since 1902. Cold water sloshed out of the bathtub onto my wall as the baby’s fever turned worse. Then, silence, except for two parents crying into each other’s arms.
The couple miss hearing these damnations. Back up in my attic, they’re happily up to their socks in dust and poking around my attic’s treasures. Not touching, just looking.
Dash your good manners! See it? See the metal chest? Open it, please open it.
A balding man wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt calls to his partner who’s eyeballing a moth-holed Persian rug rolled up in my hallway corner. Unrolled, it would reveal dried clumps of pink Play-Doh from happy playtimes after school. The Play-Doh clumps stayed but the children grew up and left me.
“Sweetie, hurry, come look! Can you believe it? Shag carpeting. In green and blue! Just like our first apartment in the 60’s! How weird is that?”
The couple poked their heads into that bedroom earlier and laughed at my time-warp carpeting. After telling each other it’d be the first to go but catching themselves on a critical technicality. That is, if they bought me.
Good. “If.”
Looking around my once grand parlor, a timid-faced woman with a legal pad full of notes and scribbles worries aloud when the couple come back downstairs.
“It’s so, so, well, big. Wouldn’t I just rattle around? And how would I furnish such a huge space? And how about heating bills? Especially the attic, a real heat sucker. Oh, dear!”
Sensing her hesitation, the wife fans her worry with a sisterly tone, “Yes, and what about the cost of many air filters for many heaters? Not to mention, from what I hear, even portable floor units aren’t at all safe in these old, very old, homes.”
Her husband stands silent, trying to look suitably grim but turns away with a cough to cover up his chuckle.
The couple walk back up my mahogany staircase, enjoying every step with their hands smoothly coasting along the banister. Generations of children sneaked in exciting slides down and enjoyed private refuge in my stair landing. The husband says he wishes he were a boy again and free to whiz headlong down the long curves. The wife says she wishes she were a little girl and could tuck herself into the enticing space between the top stair step and last banister bar.
Can’t you at least try to buy me?
Back again in my largest bedroom, the wife reaches for bedraggled lace curtains with careful fingertips, noticing how they frame a lovely view of my evergreens. The sun has reduced fabric threads to whispers of their original strength; her tentative touch causes a few to shred. The wife looks horrified at how she damaged them.
“I’ll make these come alive again, I promise, new lace curtains. Even if I must eat beans for every meal.”
1936. Another young wife and mother made a similar vow so her children will have new school shoes. I remember.
Distracted, the wife doesn‘t notice a family enter the room. She hears a teenaged girl speak. “This bedroom feels kinda, um, creepy. Don’t you feel something weird?“
The wife says nothing when the parents glance up at their daughter, who nervously twirls her hair and whispers, “Know what, I bet people died here. I mean, it’s so old and, well, I don’t know . . . yucky.”
Yes. I’m old. People died. Even iris died each year.
Her parents, their energy tapped out from looking at houses all week, ignore her comment and walk out of the bedroom, studying the address for the next house on their list.
The wife stays to contemplate my gently waving evergreens, full of bird nests and new life. Eventually, she appears to feel better and eager to imagine making my old walls come alive again. Somehow. She leaves to find her husband and looks through my second floor just one more time.
She finds him measuring one of my smaller bedrooms with his feet. Leaving him to count steps, she walks into the bathroom at the end of my hallway.
“ . . . why, yes, of course we’ve done a complete and professional inspection on this fine old home.”
Standing in a bathroom, the realtor assures the timid woman holding her legal pad and copious notes that all is fine with my plumbing.
“I assure you this gem is structurally sound, needing only very minor cosmetic refurbishing.”
I was well-crafted by my builder. But my long-working and diligent water pipes need a vacation package of abundant refurbishing. Certain places sing of my old age with robust clanking and shaking.
Brow puckered; the timid woman reaches out to turn on the sink’s water faucet. As if her gesture is the downbeat of a conductor’s baton, my rusted copper pipes begin a clamorous chorus of clanking just as other house hunters walk by in the hallway. Horrified by my din, the timid woman darts down my hallway to flee down without touching my banister, clutching her notepad to her chest. Behind her come the other house hunters from my hallway, avoiding the realtor to make an equally quick exit to the next open house on their list. The wife let my clanking continue a minute longer before she turns off my boisterous faucet and smiles.
Please, please buy me. I’ll share a wonderful secret.
Nearing the Open House’s closing time, the couple end their visit by taking time to lean on my porch banister and gaze out onto Ashville Street. Just like so many have done through my decades.
He looks at her. “Is using up every dollar in our retirement savings insane?”
The wife wonders aloud, staring straight ahead. “Are we crazy? Or does this old house truly speak to us?”
You belong here.
They murmur to themselves, weighing making a low offer. The wife wonders, “Can we realistically live here? Renovations must be staggered in stages. Even then, slow to happen.”
A disgruntled curmudgeon walks out my front door with arms crossed and mutters to his wife, “I hate all these evergreens; they make me sneeze. If we buy it, these trees will be history.”
I’ve been here long enough for my evergreens to grow from wispy youngsters into lofty elders. More than beautiful, they shade me and keep air conditioning expenses at bay. In times of weariness or confusion, people sit under the branches and find solace. From my attic windows, their highest branches inspire daydreaming and solutions to life’s dilemmas.
The young couple began to giggle, knowing they’d be buying me because of my magnificent trees. And, of course, my blue-tiled roof. And my mahogany staircase. And all the rooms. Well, they laugh because just about everything I am, is a good reason for them.
After telling the realtor they’ll need to think it over, the nice young couple leave me. Walking through my battered front gate, they stand for a few minutes to look at the towering evergreens, my blue-tiled roof, my small broken window and stubborn iris waiting for a proper gardener’s touch. Not speaking, they look briefly at each other, take the other’s hand and walk away.
The dusty metal chest in my attic is untouched. Under its grimy lid, an important canvas bag waits to be found. In the throes of the Great Depression, a father hid gold coins and ingots in the chest for safekeeping. He told no one. The metal chest was forgotten, hidden behind decades of hoarding. But perhaps hidden for naught, only to be buried in a refuse heap if the bulldozer comes. If that is to be, I know my secret will be lost.
Please come back. I’ll take the very best care of you. Come back and make me a home again.
August 16, 2024
I am empty.
I hear no echoes because there are no voices, no footsteps.
One more tired blue roof tile breaks away. Tired of holding on for one hundred and twenty-four years, it gives up on redemption to slip off my roof’s edge. Breaking into pieces, each land next to the “For Sale” sign left behind in my old iris bed, tipsy with its lower edge grazing the dirt. It looks like an afterthought; dry letters curl and a missing nail at the top left tilts the message downward. It looks old and ignored, like me. I’m a forgotten old house lost in weeds, an object of disinterest in a former era. It’s true. Who’d want to buy a wreck such as myself?
My neighborhood is declining, heralding the demise of my once elegant neighborhood. Bulldozers come and several of my fellow Victorians are no more. The devastating fear of being crushed, smashed and razed down to the dirt permeates me from attic roof to basement foundation. My rafters shudder when I recall the roars and growls of those harbingers of death.
Yet, my neighborhood is changing in slow, surprising steps. Young couples, many with children, are fascinated by us. House by house, vintage homes are fashionable address once again. A new generation’s discovery of my venerable neighborhood gives hope when I observe the new buyers: parents with small children, couples without children and, to my amazement, women without husbands. Imagine that! A young woman without a husband, yet not an old maid and able to buy her own house! And I ask you, why should she not?
But I’ll never see my neighborhood reborn. Two bankers stand on the sidewalk clicking at their phones to decree my demise. All foreclosed bank properties are being thoroughly evaluated. Eager to trim operating costs, the bank is purging all non-performing property assets. Like me. I’ll be taken out of the bank’s foreclosure inventory via auction, quick and cheap.
Doomed, my deepest terror will happen. A bulldozer’s assault will demolish me; scraped down to nothing but dusty memories and a large clan of disenfranchised mice. Sold as empty land, an opportunistic builder will scrape me to nothingness.
My secret will vanish with me.
I’m just an old house, sitting hollow on a Friday afternoon in August. My fate is decided.
That same afternoon, the realtor receives a call.
September 10, 2024
I now laugh at my fears. The bulldozer is held at bay for possibly another 100 years. I am again a home.
It didn’t take long for the nice young couple to discover what awaited them.
Driven by curiosity, the wife set about digging through my attic. After several tugs, the metal chest lid opened with rusty protest. She saw a large canvas bag, moldy yet intact . . . except for the glint of gold poking through a small tear from the weight of its treasure.
They now have plenty of money for all my renovations and a fine retirement account. I love them for the gamble they dared to take when signing my new mortgage.
I breathe with relief and joy to again share all messy, glorious reverberations of life: day-to-day triumphs and pitfalls, conversations, good-byes, arguments, celebrations, greetings, humming, whistling, whispering.
I celebrate the sounds of life within my walls once again.