I am sure you all heard of the Red Baron so I will not spend any time introducing him. But did you know that his uncle, Baron Walter Von Richthofen, built a castle in Denver, Colorado during the 1800s?
The home, built by architects Jules Jacques Benedict and Maurice Bixco for the Baron in 1886-7 at a cost of $32,000. it included a gate house, and a large water tower fed by an artesian well.
He built the castle for his second wife, but she was not impress with a castle in the middle of nowhere even after he dug a canal around the castle’s ground to make everything greener. They lived in the castle for a very short time and mostly resided in a hotel in Denver.
We live just around the corner from the castle and love strolling past it when we go for a walk. The castle is a private residence today, but the couple that live there has some events on the grounds for the neighbourhood, but not when we were there unfortunately.
The baron had entrepreneurial spirit and big dreams, many of which went nowhere. Amongst many other ventures, he built a health spa called the Molkerei (milk house). Patient could sit on the open air porches and drink fresh milk while breathing “fresh air”. As the cows were housed under the building the quality of the air was a bit dubious. Today the building is no longer part of the castle’s grounds and is the Montclaire Community Centre, and Denver’s first community centre.
You can read more about the castle’s history and notable people here
And here are a few ghost stories, some more entertaining than others.
You can get a glimpse of the interior when it was up for sale here
Meanwhile, the gate house would have been just fine for us.
As to the Red Baron, both Canada and Australia claim responsibility to his demise.
That is a neat story. I would love a tour. And a spa! Sounds like he would have an interesting life story.
He was an interesting character for sure!
I dig castles (except White Castle)! 😀 There is one not far from where I live (link below), and I’ve also been to a few in Ireland, where I have ancestors.
https://lovelandcastle.com/
Oh, cool! We should try and visit next time we go that way!
Terrific post as always!
Thanks for visiting!
I was about the say that the gate house doesn’t look too shabby! Their garage is probably larger than my house. 😆 The grounds look awesome too!
The only familiarity I have with the Red Baron is admittedly the one who is Snoopy’s imagined arch nemesis in Peanuts. So I will have to do some reading on this Red Baron!
Haha, I forgot about the other Red Baron 🙂
What an interesting place and story. Did they live forever in the hotel, or eventually move back to Germany? Of course when I see a home that size and with all the suitable Devore as shown, I can’t help but feel for those who have to clean it.
They lived in a hotel for about a year until his wife finally agreed to move to the castle. It looks like later on they were back at the hotel, so it probably didn’t work out for her. I also think about those who have to clean it….
Oh, my it looks like an old European castle inside and out! What an interesting tale. The gate house would’ve been fine for us too. Great post!
It does! It was fashioned after the Richthofen ancestral family in Europe!
Whew! That’s tough when your wife is not impressed with a castle. That’s cool that the owners hold gatherings for the neighborhood.
I know! “What an I do to make you happy, dear?”
Interesting, but did I miss something? You live in Denver? Maggie
We are just visiting, helping our daughter move 🙂
What a lovely castle! A surprise to think that the wife of the owner did not approve of it…it’s a beloved one today!
It looks like the current owners are really enjoying it and making the most out of castle living!
I like the entrepreneurial spirit, it’s a good reminder that not everything succeeds, but it’s important to try.
I like the way you think. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
If it hasn’t succeeded, that doesn’t mean it never will, but if you don’t try, you never will succeed.
Absolutely!
Somehow I didn’t know there is a castle in Denver. I’ll have to check it out!
Too bad there are no tours, but you can still walk around and gawk to your heart’s content. The neighbourhood is lovely with very interesting architecture!
What a fancy looking castle, but I imagine it requires A LOT of maintenance.. Glad it’s still around, even if it’s a private residence. It’s neat that they host events for the neighbourhood. Hopefully one of these times you’ll actually be around to attend one (and report back).
it would have been nice, but we are leaving Denver today and I don’t think we will be back any time soon. Still, it was nice just to see the grounds and activities from the outside and just imagining what it looks like inside.
Wow that is quite the house..
Yeah, pretty cool, buy may be too much cleaning 🙂
I once ran into this poor young guy who had one of those impossibly long German surnames. We talked about the difficulty in the computer age of having a name longer than the number of characters allowed in various computer form fields. It came up that he and his great uncle, who lives in Germany, are the sole heirs to a castle in Germany, and when I said he should go there and claim it, he said he certainly could do that, but back taxes were owed to the state going back to the 1600’s, to the tune of several million dollars. Likewise, the overhead for the castle was a million or so dollars a year. The fun part is his uncle who lives near the castle is a bit senile, and goes on the tours (run by the gov’t) all the time and walks behind the velvet ropes frequently to handle objects–which the tour guides, who know and recognize him, allow, with covert supervision.
What a story! I can relate since through marriage, I also have one of those impossibly long names that include a title and an inaccessible villa in hungary. Most of the institutions here dealt with the name by abbreviating parts of it in different ways and the result is that every one of my IDs had a different version of the name. Fun times when you needed to present multiple IDs…
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I knew about this building but didn’t know it’s history. Your daughter lived in a lovely neighborhood!
It is a lovely neighbourhood. She doesn’t live there anymore…we stole her and will replant her somewhere in Michigan, a little closer to us!
So nice to be close, especially when there is a little one.