One of Boulder’s oldest houses was torn down on Sept. 3.
The stucco house, located at 209 S. Washington St., was thought to date back to the 1880s, according to Ellen Rae Thiel with the Heritage Center.
The property was purchased by Boulder Elementary School in 2016, as it was located next to the school. The school district paid $82,430.40 for the property, and the money came from the district’s Metal Mines Fund, according to Britton Mann, business manager for Boulder Elementary.
The school plans to build a mixed use facility for its 21st Century learning program, as well as a family engagement center, said Boulder Elementary Superintendent and Principal Maria Pace.
Pace said the house and property had been lovingly taken care of, and while the district looked at multiple options for its reuse, it required too many upgrades to meet the standards for public and school use, one of which was asbestos abatement, said Pace.
Thiel believes the first owner was a man named John Lewis, but she doesn’t know anything else about him.
The second owner was John Alfred (J.A.) Riedel, who was a pharmacist in Boulder from 1900-1928, said Theil. He owned the J.A. Riedel Drug Company in Boulder and served on the school board.
The third, and final owners before the school district, was the Herseim family, who owned it for 53 years, according to Pamela Herseim-Gill, who described how her parents, Amil and Felma, purchased the then two-bedroom house in 1965 for their large family, with eight children at home and two already grown.
Amil and Felma had moved to Boulder the previous year and taught at the then Boulder River School and Hospital.
The house, when purchased, came with all of its content too, wrote Herseim-Gill in an email.
“The home was a treasure trove of period belongings! There were antique Victorian satin ball gowns, which the girls promptly turned into play clothes. The attic was packed with over a hundred boxes of paper which Mr. Reidel, the owner of the drug store, used in his business. There was so much paper in fact, that the 10 member Herseim family used it on a daily basis from 1965 until the supply was finally exhausted in 2016,” wrote Herseim-Gill.
Herseim-Gill said there was a massive dining room table with seating for 10, with a matching sideboard buffet. There was an antique standing radio that could pick up stations in South America.
The large, heavy drapes were donated to the Boulder United Methodist Church and turned into robes for the Three Wise Men for the annual church Christmas play, said Herseim-Gill.
Prior to her parents buying the house, it had been rented by an elderly woman, who had been told not to touch any of the Reidel’s belongings, to include a nightgown hung on the bedroom door.
“Mrs. Reidel must have put the fear of God into that woman, for her to not even touch a nightgown that had been behind that door for years,” said Herseim-Gill.
Amil and Felma wanted to donate the house to the school as they had devoted their lives to education and put that plan in their will, said Herseim-Gill.
It was hoped that it could have been used by the school, but Herseim-Gill understands that it would have been too costly for the school to bring up to current public school standards.
“I hope that the district has nice plans for the property use in the future, but it is a sad day for me to see my childhood home demolished. Good-bye Grand Lady,” said Herseim-Gill.
