Of B&Bs, Ghosts, and Hidden Hipster Havens

I read an article in the Denver Post the other day about The Queen Anne, a Victorian bed and breakfast built in 1887, located in Denver's Five Points neighborhood, and which is now on the market for $4 million. The owner and his parents bought the place in 2008, and planned to sell it after 10 years, but have held onto it until now. The bed and breakfast actually consists of two Victorian homes, seen in the photograph on the left, and is right across the street from Benedict Fountain Park. From the outside, the B&B looks quite pleasant indeed.

The family purchased the place in time for the 2008 Democratic Convention, and rented out all 13 rooms to The Hill's newspaper staff. All the homes on the street are Victorians, and the park across the street is quite beautiful, as seen in the photo on the right. It is hard to believe that the City of Denver was prepared to bulldoze the entire area to accommodate the 1976 Olympics. This was one of the reasons used to reject having the '76 Olympics in Colorado, and resulted in the area being preserved. This neighborhood, just to the north and east of downtown Denver, is now pretty upscale, with lots of expensive apartments, condos, and restaurants. 

When I googled the Queen Anne to see how to get there, I noticed that Uptown Square Apartments, the subject of another recent Denver Post article, was just around the corner. This modern apartment building was built on the site of St. Luke's Hospital, which was called a "death house" by the neighbors. Two young women who recently moved into the building posted a request on Nextdoor, a local neighborhood web site, asking how to get rid of the ghost in their apartment. In addition to a lot of odd occurrences, the boyfriend of one of the women woke up at 3:00 in the morning and saw someone staring at him through the window, even though they were on the 3rd floor. Then the face disappeared. A former tenant responded to their post, writing nostalgically about his experiences with the ghosts there. Phil Goodstein, a local historian, speculates that the ghosts are probably the victims of medical mistakes, still bitter about how they died. Makes perfect sense to me.