Boulder – The floorboards in the Colorado Chautauqua’s Community House are made of fir, finished in a rich honey brown and worn from age and use to a faint glow.
On a recent night, a bluegrass band – with a guitar, an upright bass, a fiddle and a set of bongo drums – played for about 40 people, using the wood floors of the 88-year-old Community House as its stage.
The notes caromed off the floorboards and the cherry-colored oak paneling and up into the second-floor balcony ringing the room, wrapping around the audience like a warm blanket. During the quieter songs, as the musicians swayed to the music, the floorboards creaked underfoot, adding their own notes to the melody.
“You see the old pictures on the walls, you see the old boards, it really has a nice vibe,” said Kort McCumber, frontman for the band, McCumberland Gap.
That vibe is what the Colorado Chautauqua – founded 108 years ago as part of a national movement that promoted an appreciation of the arts, oratory and nature as part of a simpler way of life – has always been about. It is what the Colorado Chautauqua Association, a group that manages and preserves the communal buildings and 61 of the 100 cottages on the property, hopes to preserve.
The Colorado Chautauqua, the metro area’s only national historic landmark, will need to repair aging buildings; make the grounds more visitor-friendly; create new programs and better promote existing ones; and discover new sources of revenue to pay for it all.
In short, as the Colorado Chautauqua looks toward its next century, it finds itself facing one of the most critical questions in its existence: How to change and yet remain unchanged?
“There are no easy answers for sustain-ability for this place,” said Susan Connelly, the executive director of the Colorado Chautauqua Association.
“Our fundamental goal,” she said, “is that at the end of the second 100 years this place does not look that much different and functions as it did in 1898.”
Looking to the future
Earlier this year, the Chautauqua Association’s board of directors began, for the first time ever, putting together a master plan. The nascent effort caused a stir in Boulder, when word leaked out that a board member suggested building a new hotel on Chautauqua grounds or nearby open space.
While all involved agree that such a project, if even feasible, would be years away, the debate illustrates just how important the Chautauqua and its long-term well-being are to Boulder.
“To me, it’s the crown jewel of Boulder,” said Elizabeth Bethea, whose grandparents bought a cottage in Chautauqua about 80 years ago.
“It’s such a strong and permanent physical link with the past,” she said. “The buildings, everything there is pretty much the way it’s been. You drive into the park and you have this feeling that it’s 100 years ago.”
The Chautauqua movement started in western New York state in 1874, first as a training camp for teachers and later as a broader educational program for adults. As the idea spread, Chautauquas began emerging across the country.
Today, the Colorado Chautauqua is one of only three Chautauquas in the country still being used for its original purpose.
Cottages that aren’t privately owned are available for guests to rent. People can still get a meal at the dining hall or catch a show in the auditorium, where everyone from Rosanne Cash to jazz musician Branford Marsalis to classical pianist Emanuel Ax have played in recent years.
“We’re not trying to be an antiquated place, you know, dressing in historical garb,” Connelly said. “We’re trying to be a living, breathing place.”
Costs keep mounting
Maintaining vibrancy comes at a price.
The Chautauqua recently switched from being mostly summer-oriented to year-round. While the switch brings chances for new programs and new revenue, it also brings added expenses, such as winterizing and heating the old buildings.
The Chautauqua also needs to find a solution to the parking crunch as visitors fill up the meager parking spaces and then park for several blocks along Baseline Road.
The association faces another challenge in its mounting property tax bill. Though the Chautauqua Association is a non-profit group, it still pays property taxes for the 61 cottages it owns.
But, as the prices the privately owned cottages fetch when they infrequently come up for sale continue to rise – the most recent cottage sold for $675,000, or $430 per square foot – so do the assessed values of the association’s cottages. (The Community House alone is valued at more than $700,000, according to Boulder County records.) The annual tax bill is now close to $100,000, more than double what it was three years ago.
And while the national historic landmark distinction is an honor, it also brings with it a layer of federal bureaucracy, adding to the already existing layers of state and local oversight and complicating even the simplest of processes.
For instance, the roof on the auditorium needs to be replaced. Sticking to historic accuracy dictates using wooden shingles. But Boulder building codes require that all wooden shingles be removed from buildings by 2014 because of the fire risk.
So, just to repair the roof, the association must coordinate with the City of Boulder, the National Parks Service, which oversees national historic landmarks, and the Colorado Historical Society, which has provided funding for the project.
Even the Community House’s fir floors create a problem. Because they are not made of a hardwood, Steve Watkins, the Chautauqua Association’s preservation manager, said he must refinish them every year to keep them from deteriorating. The same goes for the boards on the auditorium stage.
“Some of the issues are big and sexy,” Connelly said. “And some are tiny and mundane. But they all cost.”
Thinking big – carefully
John Meyer, the president of the Chautauqua Association’s board, said the board is trying to think big and keep an open mind during the planning process. The idea for a new hotel was one of dozens that came out of brainstorming sessions, he said.
“I think it’s important to have the time to gather data and research,” Meyer said.
Connelly said the Chautauqua Association has hired a consultant to examine the hotel idea, but some in Boulder would like to the idea quashed before it gets any further.
“There would be so many angry citizens in the area of Chautauqua that they would never support anything Chautauqua ever does again,” said Steve Pomerance, a former Boulder city councilman.
Joyce Davies, the president of Historic Boulder, said she likes Chautauqua the way it is now and doesn’t want to see a big, new building built on or near the campus.
“This is truly a landmark,” she said, “and changing it drastically should not be in the cards.”
The controversy is a reminder that it won’t be easy for Chautauqua to reconcile its past with its future.
But, for Meyer, time is on Chautauqua’s side.
“A lot of these processes take a long time,” he said. “Maybe it’s a good thing that things don’t happen right away or overnight because it gives us time to reflect.
“(Chautauqua) didn’t happen overnight. It’s been 100 years. So the steps for the next 100 years aren’t going to happen overnight either.”
Finding a rhythm
Back inside the Community House, McCumberland Gap launched into an instrumental, heavy on the fiddle, quick on the tempo. The floorboards again came alive, this time pulsing with a rhythmic thump, thump, thump as the musicians clapped their heels against the ground.
Audience members smiled and then began tapping their feet on the floor, as well, recalling all the nights past when music animated the Community House, when people danced on those fir floors and when the boards in turn bounced with life.
In the moment, the past and the present became indistinguishable and the future didn’t seem so unlikely after all.
“I just hope they continue this,” Kort McCumber said after the show. “There’s not many places like this.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
What is the Colorado Chautauqua?
It’s a 40-acre campus made up of 100 cottages, an auditorium, a dining hall and several other communal buildings and green space at the foot of Boulder’s iconic Flatirons. It hosts concerts, talks and film festivals. Visitors can grab a meal in the dining hall and rent several of the cottages for a few nights or longer. There also are lodges where people can hold family functions. Thirty-nine of the Chautauqua’s cottages are privately owned.
When was it founded?
The Colorado Chautauqua was founded in 1898, when a group of Texas educators struck a deal with Boulder city leaders to build a summer teachers retreat. The auditorium and the dining hall also were built that year, and other buildings followed. As the years passed, the Chautauqua’s mission broadened to provide continuing education for all adults.
Why is it called a Chautauqua?
The Colorado Chautauqua grew out of the broader Chautauqua movement, which started in western New York state in 1874. The movement stressed lifelong learning and an appreciation for the arts, oratory and nature. Chautauquas were generally considered retreats and were built away from urban settings. Participants in the movement embraced a simpler lifestyle. As the movement spread, Chautauquas popped up across the country. The movement died out around 1930. The Colorado Chautauqua is one of only three remaining Chautauquas in the United States and is the only one west of the Mississippi River.
