1001 Main St History - Museum buildings

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transaction. This transaction indicates that Felix loaned her the mortgage funds to purchase Lots 1 and 2. Property documents that were recorded during the period of 1907-09 indicate that Felix Tomeo ended up with Lots 1 and 2 through a sheriff's certificate of purchase and a public trustee's certificate of purchase. The involvement of the Boulder County Sheriff and the filing of these legal documents would seem to indicate that Lucy Tomeo may have defaulted on the loan by Felix Tomeo to secure the property. The J. D. Best Mercantile Company was also a party to some of these transactions, but its specific ownership interest in the property could not be determined. Boulder County gives the date of construction as 1908, but is sometimes in error with respect to the dates of construction of Louisville buildings, so other evidence is looked to. Also, the 1985 architectural survey of the Tomeo House gave the estimated year of construction as 1910. The house does appear on the 1909 Drumm's Wall Map of Louisville, so it was constructed by then. Also, according to the Tomeo family, Felix and Michelina Tomeo's first child, Dominica Emelia, was born in the Tomeo House on June 12, 1904, and Felix Tomeo is listed in a 1904 Louisville directory as living in the Barclay Place subdivision. Last, Tomeo family descendants have indicated that the house was built in 1904. For these reasons, the date of construction is believed to be "circa 1904." This building is typical of coal miners' houses built in Louisville at the turn of the last century. Early wood frame houses were generally one story with two or three rooms and simple exterior detailing. The house has never had running water or a bathroom. (It was being used for storage and not as a residence in the 1950s when Louisville built a sewage system and for this reason was not required to have a bathroom added, it is believed.) The Tomeo family built additional buildings on what is now the Museum campus. Family members built a two-story building in the area just south of the Tomeo House, and, in circa 1905-06, they built what we now call the Jacoe Store just south of the two-story building. Between 1904 and 1916, Felix and Michelina had eight children. The second floor of the two- story building became the home to the growing family of Felix and Michelina Tomeo. Felix died in 1918, leaving Michelina with eight children and three buildings. In 1930, Michelina remarried to Joe Biella, a widower whose house was across the alley to the west from the Tomeo House. Michelina died in 1966. In 1937, Michelina conveyed her ownership of Lots 1-4 to her seven surviving children. In 1945, four of them transferred their interests to their siblings Gene, Dominic, and Joe. Joe passed 3