Denver Cottages & Homes

It was another beautiful day during my visit to Denver, Colorado, so my daughter-in-law and I dressed Leo up and put him in his stroller to take a walk around the neighborhood.

Mauri, my son and daughter-in-law's Pomeranian, was excited that he was going to walk with us too!

I loved this little cottage, and was lucky that there was an open house for it one day so that I could peek inside. It was built in 1891! Almost totally updated inside, it still retained it's original charm outside. It was a two bedroom duplex, with two baths, a stainless steel appliance and granite counter top kitchen, and an enormous deck and property in the back. The wooden fence went around it's whole perimeter. It was a very sweet, doll house type property.

Another colorful Victorian cottage with quite a bit of the original ornamental detail.

As you can see the multicolored striped wooden scallop design was popular during that era.

I wonder if this front porch and balcony may have been added at a later date?

A whole row of cute cottages, each slightly different.

This house had the original Victorian wrought iron fence around its perimeter.

You will have to click on the photo above to enlarge it to see, but this house had a colorful gecko sculpture attached to its facade, and some sort of gargoyle bird figurine?

This house was now converted into a real estate office. Nostalgic Homes Real Estate specializes in older urban vintage and historic homes located in many Denver neighborhoods. Denver has not suffered the decrease in home value that many areas in the United States has experienced from the present economic downturn, perhaps because they have not embraced over expansion or urban sprawl as much as other areas, and residents have embraced buying and preserving the existing older home stock. Also, Forbes Magazine has called Denver one of the most popular cities in the United States, and it's population continues to rise each year.

Some larger Victorian homes.

This street made me smile because the houses looked like many I see in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.

The 5-county Denver-Aurora Metropolitan Statistical Area had an estimated 2008 population of 2,506,626, and ranked as the 21st most populous U.S. metropolitan statistical area. The population of Brooklyn is almost the same, and we have the largest population of NYC's five boroughs.

A beautiful carved eagle sculpture outside this Denver home.

Another frequently seen style of house is the Craftsman style brick bungalow.

A few stores with a western design along an avenue.

This is Denver's original gourmet cupcake bakery called "Happy Cakes." Martha Stewart has selected the Happy Cakes "Cosmo" cupcake as one of "Martha's Favorites" as featured on her show MARTHA during Cupcake Week and on her website. The "Cosmo" is a Vodka-soaked cranberry cupcake with lime-infused butter cream.

Blue seems to be the most popular house color!

Mauri was enjoying our long walk....

...... and Leo was enjoying a long nap while his Nonna was busy taking all these photos of the different homes.

I loved the wooden architectural ornaments on these homes.

This house was impressive! Please enlarge to see the gargoyles at the sides of the front gate. A good way to keep annoying solicitors from the door?

More pretty colors on these cottages.

This stone house had an interesting half circular porch.

Another pretty front porch on this red brick home. I love the porch swing!

This is the Koopmeiners/Baehre Residence. They rescued and reclaimed an abandoned church and school that had a leaky roof and termite damage, and converted it into this award winning home!

Two large beautiful Victorian architecture corner houses. I'd like to live in either one!

Our walk was coming to a full circle, so we headed home.

One happy little boy in front of his house! Home Sweet Home.

Next blog post I'll take you to a large antique, memorabilia, collectibles store I discovered in Denver. I'm sure you'll see things in my photos that you will remember from your youth!