Shilling–Lamb House facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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Shilling–Lamb House
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East elevation, 2011
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 Location in Colorado
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| Location | Aspen, CO |
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| Built | 1890 |
| Architectural style | Queen Anne |
| MPS | Historic Resources of Aspen |
| NRHP reference No. | 87000163 |
| Added to NRHP | March 6, 1987 |
The Shilling–Lamb House is a special old home in Aspen, Colorado. People sometimes call it Victoria House. It was built around 1890 using a wood frame and shows off the Queen Anne style. In 1987, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places, which means it's an important historical building.
This house is unique among other Queen Anne homes in Aspen. It has less fancy decoration and features a cool corner tower. The house is named after its first two owners. Later, in the 1900s, it belonged to Edgar Stanton. He helped start the famous Aspen Music Festival and School. The house is still a private home today and looks much like it did when it was first built.
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What Does the Shilling–Lamb House Look Like?
The Shilling–Lamb House is on the edge of Aspen's West End neighborhood. It sits on the west side of North Second Street. Other houses are around it, but another old Victorian home, the Newberry House, is just a block away. Big, old trees give shade to the area. The ground is mostly flat, sloping gently towards the Roaring Fork River to the north.
A simple wooden picket fence separates the house from the street. The house has two stories and is made of wood. It sits on a tall sandstone foundation. Most of the house is covered with clapboard siding. However, the parts under its cross-gabled roofs have wood "dog-ear" shingles. These shingles were very common in Aspen.
Unique Features of the House
A large, eight-sided tower stands on the southeast corner of the house. It has a pointy, cone-shaped roof, also covered in shingles. A porch runs along the front (east side) of the house on the first floor. It has a simple roof supported by wooden posts with pretty decorations. A small gable covers the main front door. There's also an open porch at the back of the house.
All the windows are simple one-over-one double-hung sash windows. This means they have two panes of glass, one above the other, that slide up and down. The only exception is a single-pane window on the second floor of the tower's northeast side. A small louvered vent is in the highest cross-gable section.
History of the Shilling–Lamb House
Arthur Shilling built the house around 1890. At that time, Aspen was a very busy mining town. Just ten years earlier, it was mostly tents and log cabins. People were getting rich from the silver found in the nearby mountains. Many of them used their new money to build fancy homes.
Building in a Boomtown
Many of these new homes were built in the West End. This area had been planned out with a grid plan for its streets for a long time. Arthur Shilling, who owned a dry goods store, picked a spot near the north side for his home. His house showed off the popular Queen Anne style. It had many different roof shapes and a special tower. These features, along with its simpler outside walls, made it stand out from other Queen Anne homes in Aspen.
The "Quiet Years" in Aspen
In 1893, a big financial problem called the Panic of 1893 hit the country. This led to a law being changed that had helped Aspen's silver mines. Because of this, many mines closed, and people left Aspen to find work elsewhere. This started a long period in Aspen's history called the "quiet years." During this time, the number of people living in Aspen kept going down, and times were tough.
Five years later, Albert Lamb bought Shilling's house. Lamb had moved to Aspen in 1887 and owned a successful drugstore. During the quiet years, many old buildings became empty. They often ended up belonging to Pitkin County because people couldn't pay their taxes. Without money to fix them, these buildings were often destroyed by fires or the harsh Rocky Mountain winters. Aspen is almost 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level!
The Shilling–Lamb House was changed a little during this time. Some windows were made bigger. The decorative tops, called Finials, were taken off the tower and roof. The back porch, which used to have a roof and fancy wooden columns, was made longer, and its roof was removed.
A New Beginning for Aspen
The "quiet years" ended around the middle of the 1900s, after World War II. People who loved skiing had started building trails on the mountains nearby in the late 1930s. They came back after the war to continue their work. The new Aspen Skiing Company got help from Walter Paepcke, a businessman from Chicago. He and his wife Elizabeth thought Aspen was the perfect place to start a classical music festival, like the famous Salzburg one in Europe.
The Paepckes bought many old houses and businesses in Aspen. They wanted to fix them up and bring them back to life. The Shilling–Lamb House was one of the homes they bought. In 1950, they sold it to Francis and Edgar Stanton and their wives. The Stantons had fallen in love with Aspen a few years earlier and eventually moved there for good.
Edgar Stanton was a founding member of the Aspen Music Festival and School. He had worked in audio engineering during the war. In the early 1950s, he started the Edgar Stanton Audio Recording Institute. This school helped train engineers and worked with the music festival. Edgar soon built new property on the mountains across the Roaring Fork River. He sold his part of the Shilling–Lamb House to his brother and sister-in-law. Francis Stanton sold his share in 1958 to move to a house on Red Mountain.
