That Old House... Englewood, Colorado
With the never ending increasing Denver area traffic, I sometimes have to come up with alternate routes to work. I found this house on a several block detour from my normal route. You see all kinds of old houses when you drive around town. Englewood was established in the late 1800’s, so there are quite a few still standing that are 100 years old or more. And they are disappearing too.
Englewood has a good mix of near century old houses that are in various states of disrepair... And a bunch of ugly modern and uber-expensive homes, that are overtaking anything over three decades old. With the real estate market the way it is, the profit margin in buying a crusty old falling down house, flattening it, then building a shiny new one on the cleared lot, could probably make you around $200,000 if you know what you’re doing...
Unfortunately, I sure do not… (I would probably end up just living in the falling down crusty house...)
In early April of this year, I needed to turn on Cornell instead of Dartmouth, due to traffic. A few blocks in, I saw this boarded up house. The part that caught my eye (and didn’t get a picture of) was the roof. Where you see the vertical patches in the shingles, there was a large open hole. In case of confusion, bright orange spray paint announced the word “hole”, with an arrow pointing to it.
A few days later, I returned to the house to find said hole patched over. But my camera was with, so I parked the car and did some light trespassing. Lucky for me, they did a better job of patching the roof than they did the windows...
Some very old trees had already been cut down around the property. This house was likely too small to have much value in today’s market, the land underneath is where the money is at. But it’s sad that the trees couldn’t have been saved and incorporated into the design of whatever is coming up here next…
The original front porch most likely was not that large cement slab. If you look very closely, you can see white Christmas lights hanging off the roof...
The city has been here recently to weigh in on what’s going on at the house. On February 6, 2017, to be exact… Basically, there are four sheets of paper describing the property as unsafe for entry. They were also cited for not securing the windows. I don't know how it looked before, the windows are covered, but by no means sealed. Well, I’m sure not going inside. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to look inside!
The view inside the window barricaded by the two blue painted frames. Not a whole lot left beyond the skeleton and that pile off scrap metal in what may have once been a bedroom...
The view inside the other window covered by the blue “t”. My guess is this was the living room, with the kitchen behind it.
North side of the house. More Christmas lights can be seen hanging here. I wonder what year this house last had electricity? When the city cited the house for not having the windows secured, it appeared they just nailed up whatever they could find on site.
The view inside from the middle window on the north side. It's a very small house, that looks like it had a remodel into several rooms that likely weren't in the original layout.
Back porch of the house. The windows and doors were sealed tight back here, so I couldn’t get a peek inside from this side.
Adjacent to the house on the east side, just before the alley, was a small garage-house-shop-whatever… It too was boarded up… And is that smoke damage coming up from the plywood?
A hole in the roof of the garage-house-shop-whatever. This was not marked with orange spray paint warnings. So don't fall in...
Oh cool! A back door to the garage has been left open. And the answer to my question is yes... That was smoke damage!
Sidewalk stamp from 1954 on the north side of the house.
That’s a pretty big dead tree stump they’ve unearthed…
I went back three weeks later to see the house still standing. It almost looked kind of nice under a blanket of fresh snow…
(May 7, 2017) One week later.. The snow was gone, with the house and garage-house-shop-whatever gone too…
Since I didn't get this story up Sunday as I'd hoped, I decided to drive by the property today (July 31, 2017), to see what they've started building on the land...
They built a temporary fence.
I would have assumed there were plans for something to grow here, but maybe the city just wanted it knocked down. I bet 14 Luxury Apartments are coming here soon...
Englewood has a good mix of near century old houses that are in various states of disrepair... And a bunch of ugly modern and uber-expensive homes, that are overtaking anything over three decades old. With the real estate market the way it is, the profit margin in buying a crusty old falling down house, flattening it, then building a shiny new one on the cleared lot, could probably make you around $200,000 if you know what you’re doing...
Unfortunately, I sure do not… (I would probably end up just living in the falling down crusty house...)
In early April of this year, I needed to turn on Cornell instead of Dartmouth, due to traffic. A few blocks in, I saw this boarded up house. The part that caught my eye (and didn’t get a picture of) was the roof. Where you see the vertical patches in the shingles, there was a large open hole. In case of confusion, bright orange spray paint announced the word “hole”, with an arrow pointing to it.
A few days later, I returned to the house to find said hole patched over. But my camera was with, so I parked the car and did some light trespassing. Lucky for me, they did a better job of patching the roof than they did the windows...
Some very old trees had already been cut down around the property. This house was likely too small to have much value in today’s market, the land underneath is where the money is at. But it’s sad that the trees couldn’t have been saved and incorporated into the design of whatever is coming up here next…
The original front porch most likely was not that large cement slab. If you look very closely, you can see white Christmas lights hanging off the roof...
The view inside the other window covered by the blue “t”. My guess is this was the living room, with the kitchen behind it.
North side of the house. More Christmas lights can be seen hanging here. I wonder what year this house last had electricity? When the city cited the house for not having the windows secured, it appeared they just nailed up whatever they could find on site.
The view inside from the middle window on the north side. It's a very small house, that looks like it had a remodel into several rooms that likely weren't in the original layout.
Back porch of the house. The windows and doors were sealed tight back here, so I couldn’t get a peek inside from this side.
Adjacent to the house on the east side, just before the alley, was a small garage-house-shop-whatever… It too was boarded up… And is that smoke damage coming up from the plywood?
A hole in the roof of the garage-house-shop-whatever. This was not marked with orange spray paint warnings. So don't fall in...
Oh cool! A back door to the garage has been left open. And the answer to my question is yes... That was smoke damage!
Sidewalk stamp from 1954 on the north side of the house.
That’s a pretty big dead tree stump they’ve unearthed…
I went back three weeks later to see the house still standing. It almost looked kind of nice under a blanket of fresh snow…
(May 7, 2017) One week later.. The snow was gone, with the house and garage-house-shop-whatever gone too…
Since I didn't get this story up Sunday as I'd hoped, I decided to drive by the property today (July 31, 2017), to see what they've started building on the land...
They built a temporary fence.
I would have assumed there were plans for something to grow here, but maybe the city just wanted it knocked down. I bet 14 Luxury Apartments are coming here soon...
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