Dear Buck:
Can you provide some history behind the little white house on the southeast corner of West 57th Street and Taft Avenue? Is it historic? Seems like it’s right in the way of widening the intersection.
Signed: Little House on the Corner
Dear Little House:
I’ll answer your last question first.
Yes, that little house and its outbuilding are destined for destruction, possibly as early as this month, because of planned road work, according to the city of Loveland.
Randy Maizland, a civil engineer with the city’s Public Works Department, told me that traffic impacts from the Eagle Brook Meadows development near the southwest corner of the intersection have triggered required improvements to the intersection.
“The intersection of Taft Avenue and 57th Street is planned to be improved with additional lanes and a new traffic signal as well as widening on 57th Street in both directions east and west of the intersection,” Maizland said in an email.
The road construction is scheduled to begin this fall or winter and be completed next year, he said, although some complications with utilities could delay the start until early 2021.
As a result, the little house at 5612 N. Taft Ave. will be demolished to make room for the widening, possibly soon, Maizland said.
Unless someone steps forward and offers to take the house away.
Church uses
Katie Martinez, executive pastor of Crossroads Church, said the church bought 72 acres of land near that intersection in November 1999 as the home for its first building. The next year, the city approved a planned unit development for Crossroads that included the requirement that the church grant the city an easement near the bordering roads.
So the city controls the land where the house sits, she said, but it allowed the church to use the house.
“While we were under construction for the main building and development of the campus, we had youth events there,” she said. “The church has fond memories of hosting youth events in the house.”
The church also used the buildings for storage but hasn’t lately, she said, because of the condition of the structures.
This spring or summer, the city asked the church to remove the buildings because of the impending road work, Martinez said. That removal will involve asbestos remediation first, and then demolition, she said, ideally by the end of this month.
The church hasn’t looked into the possibility of moving the buildings, she said.
But, “if someone was interested in it and wants it, they should contact the church,” Martinez said.
A bit of history
Because I’m a sucker for the stories that old houses can tell, I did a little research last week. I found that the church bought the property from LeRoy Weitzel, a descendant of Germans from Russia who moved here with many of their compatriots toward the end of the 19th century.
According to his obituary, LeRoy, who died in 2007, was born on the property in 1924 to Conrad and Emma Weitzel and graduated from Loveland High School in 1942.
Conrad’s parents, John C. and Katie Weitzel, had immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1892 with their two sons, Conrad and John H. Weitzel, according to a history compiled by the city of Loveland’s Historic Preservation Commission.
The Weitzels settled first in Nebraska, where daughters Anna and Margaret were born, but in 1904 they bought 160 acres, a former homestead north of Loveland, which included property that’s now on the north and south sides of 57th Street.
After John C. Weitzel died, the land was split between the sons, with John H. Weitzel taking the portion to the east of the railroad tracks and Conrad receiving the land to the west of the tracks, according to the city’s history.
Then Conrad’s portion was split between his sons, with Reuben John Weitzel getting the half on the north side of 57th, which has now become the city’s Sunset Vista Open Space, and LeRoy receiving the southern half.
Five kids in a little house
LeRoy and his wife, Leota, married in 1950, lived in the little white house, continued farming the land and raised their five children there: Larry, Cathy, Terry, Nancy and Vicki. LeRoy Weitzel also worked for more than 40 sugar beet campaigns at the Great Western Sugar Factory in Loveland, according to his obituary. Leota died shortly after LeRoy sold the land.
The house probably was built in 1921, according to an inventory of historic sites that the city did in 1999.
Dennis Anderson, a pastor at Crossroads Church, interviewed LeRoy Weitzel around the time of the sale of the land, and he wrote down some of LeRoy’s recollections so church members would understand the history of their new property.
LeRoy told Anderson that the original house was 10 feet by 12 feet, which now makes up part of the present living room. The house was added onto several times as the family grew, he said.
Some of LeRoy and Leota’s children still live in the area. I wasn’t able to talk to any of the Weitzel children, but I did make contact with the wives of the two sons.
Kerrie Weitzel, who married the oldest Weitzel boy, Larry, in 1970, remembers visiting the home both before and after they were married.
“It was a two-bedroom house,” she said. “It didn’t have indoor plumbing until Larry was 7 or 8. That’s when they put in the bathroom and the running water for the kitchen and the washing machine.
“He remembers taking baths in the tub on Saturday nights,” Kerrie Weitzel said.
Before that, “they had a well where they would pump water,” she said. “One of his early chores was to bring water into the house.”
“That was all they knew”
Larry, who graduated from Loveland High School in 1968, used to ride his bike the 9 or 10 miles to school, she said. He moved out of the house after high school.
Kerrie Weitzel said the family would get together at the house often for special occasions.
“We used to have barbecues on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and have Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners there,” she said.
“That little porch out front — my husband was a carpenter, and he built that for his mom after we were married,” she said. “She’d always wanted a porch with a swing. He put up a swing for her.”
Kerrie Weitzel remembers that before Larry left home, the four oldest children slept on two sets of bunk beds in one bedroom, and the parents had the crib for their youngest child, Vicki, in their room.
“I don’t remember any of the kids saying it was too cramped,” she said.
Audrey Weitzel, wife of third child Terry, agreed that the family took the limitations of a small farmhouse in stride.
“That was all they knew,” she said.
Buck Thompson finds answers to questions regarding life in Loveland. Send your questions to news@reporter-herald.com with Dear Buck in the subject line, or write to Reporter-Herald — Buck Thompson, at P.O. Box Y, Berthoud, CO 80513.
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