601 McKinley Ave History - Laserfiche WebLink

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During those decades, until the early 1980s, Pine Street and the rows of houses along it ended at around McKinley. Today, Block 10 of Louisville Heights translates to the west side of the 600 block of McKinley Ave., and the Corrigan Addition translates to the east and west sides of the 600 block of Johnson Ave. In 1906, Wolfer and Affolter sold all of Block 10 of Louisville Heights to Donata Maria Girardo. In 1921, Charles and Edna Avis Smith purchased Block 10 of the Louisville Heights Addition from Girardo. In a separate transaction, the Smiths purchased both blocks of the Corrigan Addition in 1922. In 1927, W. Edgar Griffin purchased the property contained in these three connected blocks, most likely as an investment. He died in 1943. His wife, Lucille Griffin, who remarried and became Lucille Bertolotti, inherited the property. In 1945, Raymond and Erlean Berg purchased the three blocks from Bertolotti. Raymond Berg was a former Louisville coal miner who went to work for Public Service in the 1950s. It was the Bergs who began to sell off individual lots to people to build homes. In 1947, the Bergs sold the parcel that would become 601 McKinley to Ralph and Helen Grunkemeyer. They had their home constructed on the property the same year. The 1947 date of construction given by Boulder County appears from the evidence to be the correct date. Grunkemeyer Family Ownership, 1947-1977 Ralph Grunkemeyer (1907-1954) came from Nebraska to Louisville in the early 1930s as a druggist and purchased the business of the Bungalow Drug Store in about 1934. Bungalow Drug was an important downtown business that supplied the town with medical supplies, medication, magazines, and toiletries, and offered soda fountain service as well. It was located on the west side of the 700 block of Main Street. Today, its location would be just to the north of the Austin Niehoff House at 717 Main, where the parking lot to the south of City Hall is located. Grunkemeyer's purchase included many of the fixtures, including a liquid carbonics soda fountain, soda fountain stools, showcases, malted milk mixers, ice cream dippers, an electric grill, and magazine stands, as itemized in a document recorded with Boulder County in 1935. These are two views of the Bungalow Drug Store from before and after a renovation that was done during Grunkemeyer's time, the first from the 1930s and the second from 1948: 2