My various adventures of a "Going Outside and Doing Things" nature, mostly in the great outdoors of Colorado. Hiking, playing with the dogs, rock hunting, abandoned houses, gardening... and probably more!

Thursday, September 27, 2012

July 6, 2012 - The Abandoned House

The main thing we did on the 6th was to seek out an old, abandoned house.  It’s difficult to access, and almost impossible to find unless you already know it’s there. It was quite a walk to get to it, through a large field and a larger expanse of forest and park land.

There were dragonflies!





Remnants of gateposts and a driveway, still quite a ways away from the house.

Vine growing perfectly up the tree trunk.

Turtle skeleton.

Other side.

First glimpse of the house.

We don’t know a whole lot about this house, though the friend we stayed with managed to turn up a single article that gave some information. (This was some time ago, and I haven’t read the article… I’ll have to get a copy at some point.) Evidently, it was once a bed and breakfast for people traveling (mostly by train) to and around DC. You can still see some evidence of that in the forest around it; there are rose bushes and raspberry canes all over the nearby property, which were probably intentionally planted on the grounds, and have since grown wild.

The house is an absolutely beautiful Victorian, with a little Gothic thrown in, a style that doesn’t have many surviving examples in the area. And tragically, it’s probably going to wind up as another “demolition by neglect” building. Technically that’s not legal, but it evidently happens all the time; property owners want to get rid of the buildings on their property, but face some opposition to actually destroying them, so they just wait for them to fall down on their own.




It's a little hard to tell, and the closer-up pictures didn't turn out, but the windows
have original glass in them - it's just slightly warped and varies in thickness.



LOVE this wraparound porch.

The worst of the damage... sagging in and breaking.




Stone stairs.*

Swarm of bees!

Old farming equipment,

Awesome spider web.

The gate.

I hope that I get to see this beautiful house again someday; I hope even more that someone really does wind up fixing it up. It’s a beautiful building (and I’d kill to see the inside of it!) but I’m afraid it’s another one that’ll wind up collapsing and being forgotten entirely.

*This photo is from Alex's camera.

9 comments:

  1. This is a gorgeous house. It's really a shame when people don't renovate older structures like this but feel the need to build all new houses -- often times that have similar looks to the old.

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    1. Out there it's really sort of... bizarre to see the clash between older structures like this and newer developments. The area we stayed in when we were in MD was pretty wealthy; it's a very good area to live in, lots of people want to live there, and therefore development has gone crazy in the last several years. Old houses have a lot more... artistry, I guess, to them than the newer ones. Old ones are much more unique, and are built to last; the house we stayed in (while in poor repair in some respects) has had part of it standing since the 1700s.
      There's also this hideous trend out there of putting false fronts on new houses out there... so a house is covered in pretty basic cheap-ish looking siding, but the front has a layer of brick or stone. But of course you can see where the "nice" front ends at the corner of the house. It looks really super tacky, in my opinion. It'd look better to just not bother with the fake front. (I don't know if this is a thing that's done in Texas, but it isn't in Colorado, as far as I know, so it sticks out really badly to me.)

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  2. Living in small town Nebraska has given me a new appreciation of old buildings left abandoned. My house is 90 years old and has some issues, but it also has a lot of character that I love. There are a lot of farm buildings that I see all the time just left to the elements. It seems so strange to me because I expect people to either take care of the buildings or to tear them down, but it is all too common.
    Last Sunday Jake drove us through a "ghost town" not far from here. Again I don't understand how people can just abandon land and buildings.

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    1. I adore abandoned places, but I also adore well cared-for old buildings. There aren't so many around here in Colorado anymore; lots of prime development space, so stuff does get knocked down. I noticed how much older architecture there was in Lincoln when I was there for your wedding, and it really impressed me.
      It seems bizarre to me to abandon places like this. But a lot of people just don't care. They maybe keep the land, but it's just one of those things that they don't put much thought into because they live elsewhere... and everything on it just sort of falls to pieces.

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  3. Wow! Is this house still around?

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  4. What information does the article give about the location and history of the house.

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  5. Hi! Have any real estate companies thought about restoring this house? I would love to look into whether or not it's feasible for me to do it. Can you please email me the address and I will see what I can find out. Thanks so much, Nancy

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  6. My email address is fellowshipproperties1@gmail.com

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