A great day-trip destination in the Colorado Rockies is the town of Leadville, at 10,430 feet (3180 m) above sea level the highest incorporated city in North America. Leadville is a Victorian-era boomtown which in its gold and silver mining heyday was home to 30,000 residents. Today, less than 10% of that number still lives here, but there’s a lot to see in Leadville that makes it well worth a stop. Also, all the roads leading to the town make for a beautiful day’s drive.
70 square blocks of Leadville were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. We’ve featured some of the buildings from the downtown area in a prior post. Today’s I’d like to focus on some of the pretty little homes you’ll see if you divert yourself from the town’s main drag.
If you wander the residential streets of Leadville, you’ll see many beautifully preserved Victorian era homes, including “gingerbread homes”. Here’s a far from exhaustive example of some of these:
And while our last photo is not of a home, I did love the design of Leadville’s Episcopalian church.
I think for the U.S., Victoria is pretty much it. We’ve often shared styles, but what is referred to in England as Regency is usually called Federal here. You might make an association between your Georgian and our ‘Colonial.’
Certainly no post-Victorian styles here are associated with reigning monarchs. I wonder what sort of style might be associated with Edward VIII… well, maybe not!
A wonderful display of Architecture from bygone times. I love the way colours have been woven into the fabric of the buildings. Do many American (inc Canadian ) people define eras of History by the reigning Monarch of the time ?
Hi Garry. Regarding your comment, I think the Victorian era was one that was “special” in world history. It was a time when the sun never set on the British empire and the British influence on the world (mostly good in my opinion — a common language, parliamentary goverance, etc) was at its peak. I don’t think we’ll have an Elizibethian II era nor a Charles era.
Before its founding in 1793, Danville was a huge tobacco producer when no other crop would succeed except the “Bright Leaf” tobacco which made Danville tobacco one of the most sought after varieties and top tobacco producing areas in the world.
Competing tycoons built many homes along Main Street trying to one up each other. As a result, Danville’s Millionaires’ Row of homes became a symbol of Victorian and Edwardian architecture in the early United States. George G.