Old buildings make us wonder what they’d say if they could talk. Dave Burrell satisfies his curiosity by ferreting out the secret pasts of Denver homes and businesses.

As owner of Historical Insights, Burrell has written 200 histories ranging from a first decade report to profiles replete with genealogical information.

“I’ve never completed a home history; I’ve only abandoned them. It connotes a level of finality,” he says. 

He was steeped in history long before researching buildings. He interned at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, was curator at the Buffalo Bill Memorial Museum and taught at Colorado Timberline Academy and Ohio State University.

Burrell’s interest in history turned to houses when he purchased an early 1900s home in Central Denver. His reports are mini history lessons filled with tidbits of the past — youngsters who died in childhood, gold miners who turned to streetcar work after the gold rush.

His mission is to connect people to the past, so small details of a mid-century homeowner’s life are as important as the doings of moneyed investors. Some see nicks in the wood flooring, but Burrell sees kids playing with Tonka trucks decades earlier.

One noteworthy project Burrell describes as “a little unassuming Cape Cod” commissioned by a mortgage broker.

“I found out it was built in 1941, and the first resident was Elrey Borge Jeppesen,” he says.

Denver International Airport’s terminal is named for Jeppesen, a pilot whose maps or “Jepp Charts” helped guide Navy pilots during World War II. In 2006, Parade Magazine named Jeppesen’s Grape Street home in the nation’s top-10 little-known, historically significant sites.

Burrell learned about Jeppesen by doing what he always does: He digs. After finding the basics in the clerks’ and assessors’ records, he turns to city directories, Census records — and then to people.

“Essentially for every home I’ve done I’ll call people. It is by far the best way to get stories,” Burrell says. “Most people will think you’re a kook for calling asking about a house they haven’t owned for 30 years.”

Craig Korn found Burrell’s report on his Wash Park bungalow fascinating, particularly the property’s changing of hands in the quarter century before the house was built. In 1904, Mabel Louise Meysey-Thompson received the entire block on which Korn’s house would later be built. Burrell is fairly certain she was the same Lady Meysey-Thompson immortalized in a portrait by prolific artist John Singer Sargent, and whose relatives included a member of the British Parliament who was ennobled as a baron.

A century later, numerous quaint neighborhood homes have been scraped to make room for McMansions, and Korn says developers have been calling. Not for his house, but for its location.

“I wanted to know more about my house and if anyone noteworthy had lived there,” Korn says. “When you buy a new house in an old community you’ll never wonder those things.”

For Burrell, reintroducing the human element helps people see houses as more than just standalone buildings, but as intrinsic parts of the community.

Photos courtesy of Historical Insights