Last week we had the chance to ogle three East Side houses that have remained largely intact. This week’s Then & Now comparisons aren’t nearly as cheerful. In fact, you might find these photos downright depressing. So if you’re easily distressed, you might want to close this page right now and go back to playing solitaire or filing your nails or whatever it was you were doing a minute ago.
…
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
325 Remington Street
The circa 1900 photo is of the C. F. Keyes residence at 325 Remington Street. The more current photo shows approximately where the house was. But there is no 325 Remington today. So I made a guess on the location based upon the fact that there’s a 324 Remington just across the street. It’s hard to tell with all the trees, but this is now a parking lot (and probably has been since at least the 1970s).
Twilford Corbin Home
The Twilford Corbin house was located on the southeast corner of Magnolia and Remington. All I can say when I see this comparison is… Well, at least it wasn’t replaced with a parking lot.
405 Remington
The Abner Loomis house, at 405 Remington, was torn down in 1980. The smaller structure to the south had already been torn down by that point. Today, an electrical transformer box, a loading dock, and the back end of the Safeway building are in the same location.
Just in case you’re starting to get a bit nauseous at this point, I thought I’d throw in a house that looks very much today like it did 75 years ago.
308 E. Myrtle
Even the gingerbread in the front gable looks the same on this house at 308 E. Myrtle! I love that.
And when I found the above older photo of the house on Myrtle, I also came across this shot of four gals standing in front of the house.
The note that comes with this photo in the Fort Collins Archive states that the photo is of, “Members of the Carl and Lillian Anderson family and their home at 308 East Myrtle Street.”
I guess you win some and you lose some. But boy, losing such gorgeous houses… that’s just so darn painful.
Sources for this article:
The circa 1900 photo of the C. F. Keyes residence at 325 Remington Street was taken from the Fort Collins Archive — H05829.
The present day photo of the parking lot is from Google Streetview.
The 1964 photo of the Twilford Corbin house was taken from the Fort Collins Archive — H00905.
The present day photo of that same corner is from Google Streetview.
The circa 1886 photo of Abner Loomis house was taken from the Fort Collins Archive — H02582.
The present day photo of that same corner is from Google Streetview.
The circa 1940 photo of 308 E. Myrtle was taken from the Fort Collins Archive — H21648.
I took the photo of the house 2013 during a morning walk with the dogs.
The photo of the four gals in front of the 308 E. Myrtle house was also from the FC Archive — H21630.
I agree that it is sad that many of the structures that were built as part of Fort Collins heritage are no longer here. However, I also understand why. Expansion of the business districts in Fort Collins, including old town and at the intersections of major streets made many structures obsolete at their locations. What if Fort Collins had preserved them, could they have been refurbished with heating, plumbing and electrical systems as well as interior remodeling that would have improved their value as business locations? Could Fort Collins have acquired them for preservation purposes and essentially made museums of them. It would be great to walk around and see these old buildings, if the owners could afford to keep them, and commercial development did not replace them. In the early ’60’s, I lived in a bank building where the First National now sits. It was a home, with a store in the front. My room was the vault, 3 ft. walls, cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
There were some great homes on Remington between Mountain and Mulberry, many gone now to business and apartments.
I agree, Jerry. Our commercial district was growing and it needed room to expand. But some houses were torn down while others were moved. I hope to some day write an article on how houses were moved and which ones were moved. There’s too many to list in one post. But there are some more prominent houses that I’d like to highlight. Perhaps it could become a series of posts.
The Loomis House. Was that the one that faced East on the Northeast corner of the block? I don’t think that’s the one being torn down behind Safeway in the color photo at the post I responded to five minutes ago, unless the building identified as the Colony Market is the adjacent Poudre Rexall. Let’s just say I’m confused today.
The place was huge, though, divided into a dense nest of apartments. They didn’t seem like bad places, from what I saw. I don’t think they’d torn it down yet at the time I left Ft. Collins near the end of 1980.
They did tear down the little house that stood between the apartments and the old First Christian Church. Back when I went to church there (and Dad played organ), the little house was apparently owned by the church and used for Chi Rho meetings. In later years, it was just a little place getting rattier and rattier. It stood empty just before they knocked it down, and I went in and marveled at how darn tiny it was inside. Didn’t find any pieces of eight or valuable old comics, of course.