809 Walnut St Historic Survey - Laserfiche WebLink

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Resource Number: 5BL 11326 Temporary Resource Number: 157508404005 V. HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS 31. Original use(s): Commerce/Trade, business/professional 32. Intermediate use(s): Commerce/Trade, business/professional 33. Current use(s): Commerce/Trade, business/professional 34. Site type(s): Urban commercial 35. Historical background: This building is part of Jefferson Place, the first residential subdivision in Louisville. This building, which has also gone by the address of 811 Walnut, was constructed in conjunction with the introduction of a dial telephone system to Louisville and played an important role in Louisville's local communications history. The building was constructed in the period of 1954-55. The Boulder County Assessor records give the year of construction as 1968, but this has been found to be in error. This parcel, which in essence consists of Lot 1 of Block 3, Jefferson Place, was originally part of 801 Walnut (demolished in 2011; formerly 5BL8028). It appears that the land on which 809 Walnut sits was part of the large yard for 801 Walnut from 1889, when John Plott purchased Lots 1 through 5 from Jefferson Place developer Charles Welch, until 1954. It was in September 1954 that, according to online County property records, the then -owner of 801 Walnut, Fred Eberharter, sold Lot 1 to Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph. Eberharter was the son of Martha and Ludwig Eberharter, who were prominent business owners and property owners in Jefferson Place and in other parts of Louisville. Telephones were first introduced to Louisville in 1904. According to an article in the May 1995 Louisville Historian, Louisville had 119 telephone subscribers by 1906. An early telephone exchange where local switchboard operators worked was located on the east side of the 800 block of Main Street. That building burned down in 1927. Next, the switchboard was located in a brick telephone exchange building constructed by local businessman Rome Perrella. It has the current address of 913 Main Street (5BL8046). The May 1995 Louisville Historian includes many stories about the switchboard operators in Louisville. They were typically young women who came to play very important roles in the community. In addition to handling routine telephone connections, they also sounded whistles at noon, blew sirens in the event of a fire emergency, called farmers if floods were threatening, and were able to reach the local doctors in case of a medical emergency. The news of the end of World War II was received by a telephone operator, Bea Maxwell Wilson, who sounded the whistle in order to alert the town. Some operators were on duty through the night, and a cot was available for them. One telephone exchange manager was Jane Curtin, who was a widow with three children. She and her children lived on site in the back of the telephone exchange building at 913 Main Street. According to longtime Louisville resident Robert Enrietto, unattended dial systems were being put in all over the state of Colorado in the period of the early 1950s. As he described in the May 1995 Louisville Historian: A new switch center was constructed on the alley between Main and LaFarge just north of Walnut [at 809 Walnut]. This allows easy access to the existing cabling from the manual telephone office. Each home received a dial phone in addition to the existing magneto phone, but the dial phone was inoperative until the dial system was ready for service. After the new switch center was completed, all of the rotary switches were "blocked" using small wooden blocks to prevent their operation. These blocks were attached to square wooden poles about one inch square. Each row of switches was connected to one of these poles. When the time arrived to convert from the manual to the new unattended dial system, telephone personnel were placed in the old office and in the switch center. At 12:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, the cabling into the old office was cut and workers in the switch center walked down the rows of switches pulling the vertical wooden poles which "unblocked" the rotaries and the switchover from manual to dial was accomplished in a matter of a few minutes. During the following weeks all of the magneto phones were removed. The switch to the dial system that was run out of the building at 809 Walnut took place in March 1955. Robert Enrietto's wife, Emajane Sneddon Enrietto, was a Louisville switchboard operator who had the job of helping people convert to dial phones during the period of 1954-55. She would call phone subscribers on the old system from 3