It has survived booms, busts and bulldozers. Now, a 130-year-old Italianate house near downtown Denver — a national and state landmark — is seeking its next owner.
The "Guerrieri-DeCunto House" at 1650 N. Pennsylvania St. is on the market for $925,000.
“The heart and soul of the whole thing was, we felt like we were really putting something back into Denver, because they don't make these anymore,” William Houston, owner of the historic house, told Homes.com.
Houston has owned the house since the late 1970s and worked with his brother and a friend to restore the property and convert it into his insurance company office.
Originally built in 1896 by early Italian immigrant and wine merchant Frank Guerrieri, the Victorian has five bedrooms and one-and-a-half bathrooms — and many of its original architectural details.
“I think this property is very intact in the sense that [Houston] has kept all the historic features present on the exterior and on the interior," Annie Levinsky, deputy state historic preservation officer with Historic Denver, told Homes.com. "The interior has some of those really great classic Victorian features like that intact rail, a stained-glass window near the stairs, built-in cabinetry in the dining room, molding and decorative plaster ceilings."
Home dates to a young Colorado
Levinsky pointed out that the house is on the National Register of Historic Places and has been designated a Denver historic landmark. Its submission notes the home's Romanesque compound arch at the opening, which has "decorative brickwork inside and a contrasting stone outline that ends in an inward-turning scroll." The intricate molding under the roofline is also original to the facade.
Guerrieri and his wife, Maria, built the home about 20 years after Colorado officially became a state and Guerrieri had immigrated from Paladello, Italy. It stands in the historic Capitol Hill neighborhood.
“That part of Capitol Hill would've been pretty sparse,” Levinsky said. “Big landmarks like the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception had not even been built yet.”
The National Register of Historic Places describes the two-and-a-half-story structure as Guerrieri and Maria saw it when they lived in the home. They sold it in 1902 to Frank DeCunto, an Italian immigrant and merchant who owned it until 1919. DeCunto then sold it to fellow Italian merchant David Serafini.
The quest for preservation begins with 'bronco soup'
Ownership passed to Houston, his brother and a friend, in the 1970s. They restored the home — going so far as to boil metal fixtures like the doorknobs to bring back their original luster.
“We called it ‘Bronco soup,’” Houston said, adding that the name stems from when Houston and others would watch Denver Bronco football games while they boiled the metal and cleaned away paint and tarnish.
Levinsky explained that once a building is on the National Registry, it’s not hard to maintain that status.
Historic property owners receive incentives.
“There are preservation tax credits," Levinsky said. "There are preservation grant programs [and] a number of other opportunities that owners can choose to pursue to help them take care of a structure. But I think there's sometimes a misconception that there's some specific requirement — that is not the case with the National Register of Historic Places.”
At the state level, however, there are guidelines owners must follow.
“Denver landmarks do have a few more guidelines in terms of alterations," she said. "Again, there's no requirement of any particular action, but if someone is going to make a change, then they would go through a design review with the City of Denver to make sure those changes are compatible with the historic structure."
For Houston, "The ideal buyer would be somebody who 'gets' how important preserving this house is.
“My heart, my soul, my pride, my dog — everything I own is in this place,” Houston said.
Historic properties 'really hold value well'
The Guerrieri-DeCunto House is one of only a few historic sites left from its time in the city, and it's that history that appeals to buyers.
“We actually see that historic properties really hold value well over time because they have these unique attributes that people are attracted to — because you can't build them in this way again,” Levinsky said.
Real estate agent Claire Gear with Compass in Denver told Homes.com that the house sat on the market for a while before her agency connected with Houston.
“We tried to give it a second life this year when we did the flooring and the carpet and the paint and got it cleaned up,” Gear said.
With its proximity to Capitol Hill and a strong presence of nonprofit organizations in the surrounding neighborhoods, Gear said, the building offers an ideal space for organizations such as counseling groups or law practices. The house could be used as a home again, given its mixed-use zoning status. If someone were to convert it, Gear said, they would need to update the kitchen.
The need to convert it back into a residence, coupled with high mortgage interest rates, have made homebuyers hesitant, Gear said.
Overall, though, the history of the property draws prospective buyers, said Levinsky .
“Historic buildings carry all sorts of meanings for us,” she said. “They certainly provide a really strong sense of place ... It's an opportunity to honor and value the craftsmanship and the labor and the design that went into these places, as well as to continue to tell stories of the people that built them.”
