8 JANUARY 19-25, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | much history. And make no mistake: That will soon be the fate of this property, one of the last holdouts in an area once studded with small homes, storefronts and warehouses. It now lies in a valley created by the fi ve-story Col- lective RiNo apartment complex to the south, the up-market seven-story Catbird Hotel to the north, and a still-under-construction nine-story apartment building to the west. No original homes are left a block away on Blake; there are just two duplexes and a single two-story in the 3700 block of Walnut and a few more old residences on Downing before Five Points melts into a gentrifying sea of pop-ups and scrape-offs and new builds, mostly larger complexes or million- dollar townhomes. To the east of Marion, the Cole neighborhood, most of which is still residentially zoned, is just starting to evolve, turning over from the street corners inward, with a few holdout homes hanging on in the middle of the block. But most of the area dubbed RiNo nearly two decades ago has changed beyond recognition. New construction continues onward and upward, increasing both population and profi t. A property that had a three-story limit gets an exemption to allow fi ve; fi ve stretches to seven. Last year, some Curtis Park residents felt overshadowed by a proposed develop- ment between Lawrence and Larimer and 26th and 27th streets that needed a zoning change — and got it from the city. And there are more big projects looming on the horizon. The rowhouses on Marion, which started out as affordable living space for working-class Denver and remain that way today, may have no historic signifi cance, but over the past 120 years, they’ve built their own backstory. Much of it is lost to history, but not all. The Denver Public Library does not have a complete digital collection of city directo- ries, but it does have one from 1905, when the population of the Mile High City was somewhere between the Census marks of 133,000 in 1900 and 213,000 in 1910. Thanks to the Corbett & Ballengers Annual Denver City Directory from 1905, we know that the fi rst inhabitants of the northernmost unit — 3747 Marion Street — were two gentlemen: salesman Edmund J. Taymans and George C. Junk, the latter listed only as working for a “Com Co.” By 1911, they’d moved out, and the apartment was the residence of one Louis G. Hagus, a driver for the Lindquist Cracker Company at 35th and Walnut. In 1915, it was the shared home of meatcutter Adolph H. Behr and Frank Gyllenston; in 1920, assistant foreman at the Welcker T&S Company Peter H. Fling lived there; in 1923, fi reman Ross Rodebaugh and his wife, Nel- lie, were the occupants. In 1924, the fi rst edition of the Denver Householders Directory listed this address as the residence of Raymond and Mabel Wickell. Max and Helen Dendorfer called it home from 1926-29. In 1930, it housed Rich and Alberta Church, and in 1931 it was listed as vacant. Wil- liam Haffner lived here from 1933 to 1935, John and Juanite Dombeck from 1936 to 1937, and so on for another 75 years, a line of residents likely ending with Bruce Wayne Carl. This wasn’t a home where families lived for generations; it was a small place for a working man or a young family to rent while getting a leg up, close to jobs and public trans- portation. In 1905, the nearest streetcar stop was about a block away; 118 years later, the A Line is only a block to the northwest, and the light-rail stop at 30th and Downing is just a short walk to the south. The exteriors of the rowhouses are sturdy red brick with some modest masonry details along the roofl ine and midway down the front facade. The roof is fl at, probably tar paper originally; Carl says there’s not much in the way of insulation, but he’s okay with that. Five front doors in a row face Marion Street, mirrored along the alley with small enclosed porches that are little more than mudrooms, storage or both. The yards out back are used for both parking and gathering. There are lights strung from the trees to the clapboard porches that light up the darkness, allowing the nighttime sharing of beers, passing of joints, storytelling. It’s all a little messy, a little muddy, and well-loved in evidentiary fashion. The inside of 3747 Marion has both age and charm. There are at least eight layers of paint on the remaining wood trim, probably more on the walls themselves. It’s a shotgun layout, 550 square feet straight back: one front room leading to a central room, at some point sepa- rated by pocket doors. Carl says that when he moved in, one pocket door was still hanging on. The front is his living space — plenty of room for a futon and a desk for his music and writing. The center room comfortably holds a king-sized bed with some storage space and a closet. From there, through a door to the right, there’s a galley kitchen with three more doors: one to a surprisingly generous pantry space, one to a small but serviceable bathroom, and the last the back door leading to the enclosed porch and backyard. The architecture is “still clearly early 1900s,” Carl says, and he loves every detail. “The moldings, the doors — ev- erything is big. The ceilings are high, the walls are solid. It’s what you hope for in a place like this. It’s not some cookie-cutter place like they’re building all around us.” Maybe not cookie-cutter now, but it might have been back in 1905, when the salesmen moved in. Carl says his rent is $1,100 a month, a solid deal for a one-bedroom, one-bath with a backyard and parking. Still, that monthly payment is more than twice — possibly almost triple — the annual salaries of Taymans, Junk, Hagus and all the other tenants who laid their heads at 3747 Marion in its early days. Today the place is a far cry from what it was as recently as 1998, when current own- ers Jan Buckstein and Diane Watts bought the fi veplex for only $117,000. It was “pretty rough and tumble,” Watts recalls. All of the units were in various states of disrepair; one unit was heated only by the gas stove. The previous owners had purchased the build- ing just a couple of years before and already wanted out. Crime was high, rent was down. But Watts recognized potential. She re- members driving by, realized she could see downtown from the street in front of the units, and considered the values of similar city-center real estate in Chicago and New York City. “I knew I had to get that property,” she says. Watts recalls that the area was largely His- panic — the “for rent” signs she saw were only in Spanish, and they advertised rents of about $425 per unit. Many tenants came through as the years went on, most of them families that would set up plastic pools in the shade of the front yards, kept safe from the street by those wrought-iron fences. Mothers would sit there and talk with each other, sipping cold drinks and watching the kids splash. Not all of the residents were so wholesome. Watts recalls a few stories about drug dealers and prostitutes. The most remarkable story was the 2008 murder of Henry Blair by War- ren Worthington, a tenant of the complex. Worthington was the son of Colin Powell’s second-in-command Squeezed Out continued from page 7 continued on page 10 The wrought-iron fence in front of Bruce Wayne Carl’s home in rapidly developing RiNo is gone, but left a souvenir. TEAGUE BOHLEN TEAGUE BOHLEN EVAN SEMÓN
