721 Mead St History - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Louisville Historical Museum Department of Library & Museum Services City of Louisville, Colorado August 2015 LCityof Louisville COLORADO - SINCE 1878 721 Mead History Legal Description: The west 60 feet of Lots 2 & 3, Block 3, Kimberly Addition Year of Construction: circa 1905 Summary: The earliest owners of this house could not be determined. For about 25 years from the 1930s until 1958, Robert and Charlotte Dirkes owned the house and raised their seven children in it. Development of the Kimberly Addition, Early Owners, and Date of Construction The Kimberly Addition was named for George Kimber by his children and stepchildren, who platted and recorded the subdivision in 1911 out of land that Kimber acquired when he and his family first arrived in Louisville in the 1890s. Today, the Kimberly Addition includes about twenty homes that are located on Mead Street, West Street, and the western side of Roosevelt between Mead and West. About half of these twenty houses were built in the early part of the 1900s. The Kimberly Addition was informally called "Kimbertown" by Louisville residents. George Kimber originally came from Cornwall in England. In about 1884, he married Charlotte Wardle in Yorkshire. She is known to have had five children with James Wardle and had been widowed. Charlotte had at least four more children with her second husband, George Kimber. The Kimber/Wardle family emigrated to the U.S. in 1893 and was likely drawn to the coal mining industry in Louisville. The following image from the 1909 Drumm's Wall Map at the Museum shows that buildings had already been constructed in the area that would become the Kimberly Addition (between the subdivisions of Acme Place and Johnson's First), even though the streets had not yet been platted. The arrow was added to the image to indicate the location of 721 Mead. The street along the right side of the map excerpt is Roosevelt. This map shows how the house was located just to the east of a wide area of farmland and open space. It was also located very near the Acme Mine and railroad spur located at the southwest corner of Roosevelt and Hutchinson. 1