Unlike the Villisca house and the Lizzy Borden Bed & Breakfast, the Burnham and Wayne cottages are gone. Many of the original houses in the neighborhood are still standing after much modernization. The photo above ran in the Colorado Springs Gazette the morning after the murders were discovered and shows the crowd outside of the Burnham cottage. The house immediately behind it is the Wayne cottage. The photo below is from Google Street View and shows the view of the neighborhood looking from west to east. Note the similarity of the houses; these houses are nearly 100 years old. If the Burnham cottage was still standing it would be at the east end of this street. In 1911 a trolley line ran north and south perpendicular to the Burnham’s street. The lines were removed in the 1930’s but the street is still a major roadway. Just a few houses south of this location another axe was found, which was tested for signs of human blood. The test was not conclusive.
Do the people who live in this neighborhood know about the history? It’s hard to say. I have intentionally kept addresses private in order to ensure the privacy of the current property owners. If the current owners know about it, they probably don’t want curiosity seekers hanging around, and if they don’t know they definitely don’t need strangers driving by all the time. The Colorado Springs Gazette called this the “worst crime in the city’s history.” Almost a hundred years later I believe it still has that designation but the crime has been largely forgotten and only the silent houses left standing can testify to the chaotic crowds that descended upon the little neighborhood on a cool September morning ninety-seven years ago.
3 comments:
you are correct, the original addresses are indeed gone. What's interesting is the other houses in the area seem to date from around the same period, so did they only tear down the murder houses? The house of the neighbor Mrs. Brown is still there. I noticed that in the newspaper, there appears to be three nearly identical cottages behind the Burnham houses. In the current picture, there seems to be two identical cottages. Can I assume that the third one was once 742 Harrison place? Do you know approximately where the grocery store was? Regardless, i bet no one who lives there today knows about it.
DB - Both houses where destroyed in early 1912. The Brown's house is still standing as is the old grocery store. If you have been to the actual street, the grocery store is the two story structure that sits at the cul de sac next to I-25. In 1911 the street turned into a walking path that went to the railroad tracks to the west.
The hipsters have no idea
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