Walkin' Boulder
By Sue Deans
Training for a half-marathon walk, the former editor
of the Camera blogs about exploring Boulder

August 25, 2011

I’m headed west again today, to the shadier parts of town! From home I walk toward 9th and Arapahoe where I pass the Highland Building with its beautiful iron fence. When I lived in this area in the late 1970s and ’80s, Highland was no longer a public school but it did house the Community Free School for a while. Now it’s a beautifully appointed office building with a private club, the City Club, on the bottom floor.

The historic Hannah Barker house, in very poor shape right now, is across the street on Arapahoe. Historic Boulder is raising more than $1 million to renovate it. Hannah Barker was one of the first teachers in Boulder, and the house where she lived was built in 1870.

I turn south on 7th Street and detour onto Marine Street to see my former “hippie house,” as my husband called it. We lived there from about 1977 to 1982. I could walk to work at the Camera and he could walk to CU, and our son could walk to Flatirons Elementary School. There was a wonderful strawberry patch in the back yard. Life was good.

At Seventh and University a woman is working in a large garden on the corner where my son’s babysitter used to live. The house is gone.

I head past Flatirons Elementary and turn uphill on College to 6th Street, enjoying the shade of the trees. I search out Seventh and Aurora, where famed astronaut Scott Carpenter lived as a boy. I’m not sure which house it was, and none seem to be marked as such. He was one of the original seven astronauts in Project Mercury and I’ve heard he chose the name Aurora 7 for his spacecraft in honor of this intersection. Carpenter and John Glenn are the only Mercury 7 astronauts still living, according to Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Carpenter

At Baseline Road I get a nice shot of Chautauqua Meadow and the Flatirons. A couple of paintings in my house show the same scene. When I lived in South Carolina I would buy art of Boulder when I came here to visit. Now I buy art of the ocean when I visit South Carolina. Go figure.

Heading back toward The Hill I pass The Academy at 970 Aurora. I remember when a fire destroyed the top floor of the building in the 1980s. It was originally a girls’ Catholic school called Mount St. Gertrude’s Academy, then later housed University of Colorado offices. Now it’s all beautifully restored and calls itself a boutique retirement community. The name Mount St. Gertrude is etched above the door. theacademyboulder.com

Nearby is Boulder Fire Station No. 2, at 1010 Aurora, now the city’s Pottery Lab, the subject of much controversy as its funding is debated. The current fire station #2 is at Broadway and Baseline. This historic one would hardly hold a modern fire truck, it appears. bouldercolorado.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=60&Itemid=2159

The Pi Beta Phi house at 11th and Aurora houses the same sorority I belonged to at Knox College in Illinois. We didn’t have sorority houses at all, let alone an elegant one like this, which sleeps more than 80 girls according to its website, and is the largest Pi Phi house west of the Mississippi. Some young people I know remember coming here to see Santa Claus at holiday time, a longtime project of the sorority. pibetaphi.org/pibetaphi/colorado/chapters.aspx?id=6160

One more historic building is Harbeck House, on Euclid between 12th and 13th streets, home of the Boulder History Museum. The museum is about to open an exhibit about the year 1968 in America that will appeal to many people, especially in my age group. We were in college then and the times were tumultuous. Check it out – the museum is one of Boulder’s best-kept secrets. boulderhistory.org

Walking through The Hill commercial area toward Broadway, I see a young woman writing on this chalkboard at 13th and Pennsylvania that has spaces for “What Inspires You.” Many of the comments aren’t too legible or even worth repeating. She was writing something about dance.

I’ve already mentioned this to some of the people involved, but I still can’t figure why Alfalfa’s made the store’s name break and go around the corners of its building at Broadway and Arapahoe. Depending where you’re standing, it might look like Alfa or lfa’s, but seldom like Alfalfa’s. I love the store, though. The soup bar is my favorite.

Up Broadway and home I go: 4.76 miles today.