The Thomas Hornsby Ferril House
This narrative is taken from
the Colorado Humanities Web site.
The Thomas Hornsby Ferril House is a two-story Victorian brick house located in north Capitol Hill. Built in 1890 for the Palmers, the house was designated Denver Landmark number 36 in 1973. Thomas Hornsby Ferril's mother, Alice Ferril, was the niece of Joanna Palmer. The house was occupied exclusively by the four generations of this one family until the death of Thomas Hornsby Ferril in 1988, when Ferril's daughter Anne Ferril Folsom gave it to Historic Denver. The Colorado Center for the Book, the state affiliate of the Library of Congress, bought the house from Historic Denver in 1996 to use as headquarters for its literary endeavors. The Queen Anne-style house, approximately 2600 square feet, is considered an outstanding example of the American Aesthetic Movement, with its integration of architecture, craft and literature. The house was designed by architect Frank Goodnow, apparently with significant input from Joanna Palmer, an accomplished artist and reputedly the owner of the first china kiln in Colorado. The house has much decorative woodwork and elements of fine craftsmanship, including beveled glass and built-in cabinetry.
Some unusual interior features include the art-tile fireplaces, anaglypta wainscots and stained glass. Ferril decorated his second-floor study with American Indian motif stencils which he drew himself. Ferril's handwritten poetry can be seen on the inside of various cupboard and closet doors. The house shows many features which reflect Ferril's whimsies and impulsive decision to redesign walls. The house is filled with stories, and literary ghosts.
The significance of the house has been noted in its multiple designations. In addition to becoming one of the very first Denver landmarks, the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a literary landmark by Friends of Libraries, USA.
The Colorado Historical Society and Historic Denver have played pivotal roles in making possible the preservation of the house. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Boettcher Foundation and the Gates Foundation have also played very important roles. All agreed that restoration of this important house would make as little change to the house as possible.
With major grants from the Colorado Historical Fund and the Denver Community Development Agency, the house underwent a major interior restoration in 1996. Because of the house's historic significance, the restoration process was particularly sensitive. With federal funds administered by city as well as state preservation guidelines, the project involved very specific rules and procedures. The restoration focused on replacing the house's heating, plumbing, and wiring. In addition, a handicap lift was installed to make the house accessible.
Thomas Hornsby Ferril was born in 1896 and lived in his north Capitol Hill house from 1900 until his death in 1988. His father, Will Ferril, was the first curator of the Colorado Historical Society. Will Ferril was a journalist who published the Rocky Mountain Herald while living in the house, until he died in 1939. After Thomas Ferril's marriage to Helen Drury Ray in 1921, they made the second floor of the house into their apartment.
Helen Ferril took over publishing the Herald, a weekly newspaper, until 1972. Tom Ferril wrote a weekly column in the Herald under the pseudonym "Childe Herald". For years Ferril also wrote a column for Harper's Magazine. Ferril observed that he liked the recognition he was getting as a poet, and did not want to be identified as "the irresponsible word-slinger" rushing to do a weekly column. Yet, Bernard DeVoto of Harper's called Ferril's column, "by so far the best weekly column in contemporary journalism that there is no second place". Harper's reprinted many of Ferril's Herald columns.
The Ferril House is considered to have major historical significance as a meeting place of people in the arts. As Thomas Ferril's reputation as a poet grew, he developed relationships with nationally prominent poets like Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg, who frequently visited the house. Prominent writers on their way to Hollywood by train, including Jack London, Thomas Wolfe and Dorothy Parker, often stopped to see Ferril and be entertained.
The Ferrils were known for their lively dinner parties with theater people, writers and photographers. Friends recall parties where Ferril played his mandolin and Sandburg played the guitar. The secret train in a tunnel on tracks in the third floor attic, with stops marked for 'snake oil remedy,' evidently was used when the parties got boisterous. Guests could look down on the people in the room below and drink toasts to them. Anne Ferril Folsom recalls coming home from school one day and being startled to find someone asleep on her bed, wearing her mother's negligee. It was Carl Sandburg, taking a nap.
The literary critic, Mark Van Doren described the house as "an outstanding example of Rocky Mountain Victorian, with more gables, alcoves, niches, and semi-secret passages than one would suppose possible in any day or age." The house is filled with many of Ferril's grandfather's books from the 1890's. In an essay Ferril wrote in 1944 called "Exploring the Dark Cellar", reprinted in Ferril's anthology I Hate Thursday, Ferril talked about cleaning
the dark end of the cellar…musty with thousands of books and Pompeiian with fly ash from the new stoker. It took two days to get to the books, through scrap iron, feather mattresses, trunks, china kilns, ore samples, oil landscapes in heavy gold frames, barrels, beds, jugs, wagons, sleds, rolls of tar paper, chicken wire, squirrel cages, bird cages, chemicals. … It is now all shipshape, all the books on shelves, most of them relics of preaching by my grandfather and his father…
Ferril wrote a poem about this house, called "House in Denver." He became Poet Laureate of Colorado in 1979. His eloquent words adorn the Colorado State Capitol building in the rotunda under the dome. Ferril's friend, poet Robert Frost wrote of him:
A man is as tall as his height
Plus the height of his home town.
I know a Denverite
Who, measured from sea to crown,
Is one mile, five-foot ten,
And he swings a commensurate pen.
The Ferril House is owned by Colorado Humanities.