Why write an entire book about such a specific piece of Denver history? "The interesting thing about the mansion," Goodstein explains, "is it's one building that encapsulates Denver." See also: Ghost Adventures host Zac Bagans comes to Denver, meets Phil Goodstein
Themes like "opportunity, pretentious fortunes, sudden financial bankruptcy, slum properties, renovation and financial swindling" are all in the history of that one building, Goodstein notes. "One of the guys that owned the house was a Mark Twain miner," he says, using the "Mark Twain miner" term to describe "a hole in the ground owned by a liar." That characterizes the house's second owner, "this guy Hiram Fowler," because when Fowler "touted a mine, the price went up."
But Fowler wasn't the Lumber Baron Inn resident who "got the house by selling bogus mining claims," he notes.
The first owner, lumber baron John Mouat, "loses the fortune in 1893 when they demonetize silver and suddenly nobody wants to buy properties," Goodstein explains. "After Mouat loses it to the bank, the bank goes bankrupt, it becomes a school. Hiram Fowler gets in 1912...when he dies in 1940, his son gets it and Jim Fowler and wants nothing to do with swindling."
Goodstein describes Jim Fowler as a communist as well as the "real founder of the Denver urban gardens program." Fowler "carves the house into people's housing -- mostly a fleabag hotel," he says. "But some of his old comrades share the house and they're also organic farmers and he rents out most of the units to people needing low-cost lodging.
And there's plenty more to the story. To learn how murder and "more smoke-and-mirror financing" led to the Lumber Baron being acquired by Kelly and the building's "meta-historical function," stop by the Tattered Cover at 7:30 p.m. today.
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