724, 728 Main St History - Laserfiche WebLink

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served as a men's barbershop for sixty-eight years. The barbershop was a place where men talked business and politics, and sometimes got elected to public office — including when barbershop owner Herm Fauson himself was elected mayor of Louisville. The buildings, being located just steps from Louisville's major intersections of Main & Pine and Main & Spruce, were in a prime location and historically have had a number of prominent Louisville residents associated with them as owners or as business operators, including (among others) Charles A. Clark, Roy Austin, Lawrence J. Mossoni, Paul Domenico and Guy Domenico (these last three being members of some of Louisville's Italian families), and Herman Fauson. Many of the men associated with this property also worked as coal miners in the Louisville area at some point in their lives. Earliest Ownership; Date of Construction Louis Nawatny founded and platted the original downtown part of Louisville in 1878. Nawatny worked for Charles C. Welch, the prominent Coloradan who started the first coal mine in the area and is believed to have played an even larger role in the establishment of Louisville than Nawatny. In 1880, Nawatny sold Lot 10, Block 3 to Van Darrow, who was the brother-in-law of Charles Welch and who was a Louisville businessman. Darrow sold the property later in 1880 to Jennie Brett. (The 2000 inventory record for this property, which indicated that William and Robert Austin were the original owners, is strongly believed to be in error.) A map of Louisville made in 1880-81 shows "N. Brett" living at this location, with the name handwritten in. Jennie's Brett's husband, Newton Brett, was a carpenter. The 1880 federal census also shows them to be living in Louisville in this vicinity of Main Street (based on who is listed near them on the census page). Due to this evidence, it is believed that the buildings, or at least one of them, could have been constructed by around 1880, and possibly were constructed by Newton Brett himself, as he was a carpenter. The 2000 survey record for this property noted the evidence from the 1893 Sanborn map and concluded that the buildings were constructed in circa 1890 (not in 1900, which is the date given by the County that is considered to be a ball park estimate arrived at in 1948). The evidence of the Brett ownership and the Brett residence at this location in 1880 has not been previously considered and would suggest that the buildings, or one of them, may have been built as early as circa 1880. For the foregoing reasons, the date of construction for these buildings is believed to be circa 1880-1890. Based on the available evidence, it is not possible to determine which building was constructed first. (Both definitely existed by 1893.) In 1882, Jennie Brett sold the property to George Carpenter, and Lizzie Carpenter also became an owner. In 1885, the Carpenters sold this lot to William Cowdrey. At this point, probably due to different spellings of names in the online County records, the identities of the owners for the years of 1885 to 1890 are unclear with respect to this property. 2