Englewood – The house is said to still have arrowheads embedded in the walls, and legend has it that its owner shot at buffalo from the porch.
City leaders once considered razing Englewood’s first house, but historians rallied and saved the home, built in the 1860s by Thomas Skerritt, the city’s founding father.
The Skerritt house, at 3560 S. Bannock St., is the first piece of property purchased by Colorado Preservation Inc., an organization dedicated to historical preservation.
The group bought it in 2003 for $60,000 and refurbished it.
This week, the house went up for sale; its city landmark status means the outside of the structure cannot be changed.
“This is the oldest house in Englewood, and we believe it’s one of the oldest in Colorado,’ Colorado Preservation executive director Mark Rodman said. “We’ve worked to save a lot of historic properties in the state, but never one that we owned.’
About 1864, Skerritt, an Irish immigrant, rancher and farmer, started building the house on the site of his old log cabin near what is now the intersection of Hampden Avenue and Broadway.
In addition to owning most of the land that now makes up Englewood, Skerritt is credited with using a plow and a team of horses to grade the paths that would become Broadway from Hampden to Cherry Creek.
Skerritt also ran an unsuccessful campaign to become Englewood’s first mayor around the time the town incorporated in 1903.
Englewood City Councilman Ray Tomaso once offered $13,000 to the city to purchase the Skerritt house when city leaders considered razing it.
My daughter “wanted me to try to save it,’ he said. “She and her friends even wanted to raise money to build the foundation themselves.’
“I wanted this house saved,’ said 14-year-old Harper Tomaso, who was at an open house at the Skerritt house this week.
She is hoping to raise money for a plaque to be placed on the home commemorating its history.
“I think the house is a very important part of the city’s history, and it would have been a shame to see it go away,’ Ray Tomaso said. “The city needs to save more of these old structures.’
The Skerritt house revitalization project went so well, Rodman said, that Colorado Preservation is planning to purchase its second property – a homestead outside of Leadville, also built in the 1860s.
Littleton resident Loren Jacobsen, 75, lived and worked near Skerritt’s home when the family still owned it in the 1930s and ’40s. He remembers fields of alfalfa and apple and cherry orchards where strip malls and department stores now sit.
“When I was 12 years old, I pitched hay around here for 15 cents an hour,’ said Jacobsen, who also attended the open house. “It’s nice to finally see the inside of this home.’
Staff writer Manny Gonzales can be reached at 303-820-1173 or mgonzales@denverpost.com.
