Selling your childhood home can feel like open-heart surgery without anesthesia.
So imagine the experience of parting with a place that has been in the family for more than a century.
Denver architect Arthur “Tee” Cowperthwaite Jr., 54, and his four siblings and their broods are now wrestling with just such a sea change. But their loss has been softened by the fact that before relinquishing the old house, it will first come to the aid of the family’s favorite charity as the site of the 2011 Denver Designer Show House and Boutique benefiting Children’s Hospital.
“We were unique in being able to hang on to (the house) for as long as we did,” Cowperthwaite says of the 1909 Country Club estate at East Third Avenue and Gilpin Street. It was originally a wedding gift to his grandmother from his great-grandmother.
“I’ll miss my kids’ not having that legacy of being able to go to their grandmother’s home.”
Theirs is a rare Denver property: It was owned for so long by the same family — a family with ties to Colorado history and politics, and with many members still residing in Denver.
“Having that ancestral home just made things feel so complete,” says Cowperthwaite, who attributes his interest in architecture to having grown up there. “There was such a continuity that tied our generations together with the history of the city, because (the house history) went back almost that far.”
Even so, this 6,300-square- foot house stood empty in recent years and had not been updated in decades. The Cowperthwaites knew the day to sell was imminent.
The Tudor-inspired house, the first in the neighborhood to be built on Gilpin Street, was conceived by illustrious Denver architect Arthur Fisher, known for his Daniels & Fisher clock tower at 16th and Arapahoe streets in downtown Denver.
The house was roughly 2,700 square feet when it was built — a “starter home” by Fisher’s standards — but grew over the years to more than 6,300 square feet.
“We’re trying to respect the historic significance of the house while giving it a modern feel,” says show house co-chair Carolyn Baker with Koshi-Baker Design Associates. “Every vantage point will be attractive.”
A patio and loge just outside the main dining room were two of the few fully outfitted spaces earlier this week. Rare European and Asian antiques — from an 1880s Parisian butcher’s table to an early 20th-century Buddhist washing vessel with carved elephants and a deep basin ideal for outdoor refreshments — dressed up the space.
This eclectic look is a calling card of Stuart Hough of Decor Asian and EurAsian Interiors.
“We imagined that the people who live here traveled all over the world and collected things along the way,” Hough said. “The house is coming back to life in a fabulous manner.”
Elsewhere, painters and faux finishers pampered old walls, landscapers planted plucky spring annuals and fresh furnishings arrived by the hour.
Trish Bragg of Fuller Sotheby’s International Realty will handle the upcoming sale of the house, which is going for somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million.
She said designers who could stylize the place without detracting from its historic character were selected.
The designers’ visions will “make a very old house feel like it could be livable for a modern family,” said Bragg, a show house co-chair along with her business partner, Maggie Armstrong.
The furnishings and predominantly local artwork installed in the house will be for sale, and a boutique in the garage will feature additional home-decor finds. A portion of all sales benefit Children’s Hospital.
And while some of the design touches may not have suited their matriarchs, the home’s current owners withheld personal opinions for the good of the cause.
“We wanted the designers to have free rein,” Cowperthwaite says, “and free expression of their creativity.”
Elana Ashanti Jefferson: 303-954-1957 or ejefferson@denverpost.com
