Mary Rae. Denver Realtor. RIP.

I think I first met Mary Rae in 1975 or so. She was the go-to Realtor for any buyer looking for a home in the Capitol Hill area of Denver. She was a strikingly good looking woman with such poise and charm. Little did I know that earlier in life she was a nun. Maybe that is why she was always seemed so interested in what others had to say.

The above photo and Mary Rae's obituary appeared in the August 2, 2019 Denver Post. CLICK HERE to read.

I will keep my story as short as possible (a task for me). We looked at many places over a couple of years including the Croke Patterson Campbell Mansion (photo above) at the corner of 11th and Washington. I wrote about that property in one of my first blogs. It was such a stunning building. It had been converted into several delightful apartments plus it had a two story carriage house plus a ghost. I could have bought it somewhere around $90,000 back in the mid-1970s. I couldn't come up with the down payment. I must have made that poor lady show me twenty or thirty properties. She never gave up on me, and I never gave up on her.

A year or so later I purchased a very nice home at the corner of 9th Avenue and Clarkson Street which I owned for about five and one-half years. I sold it to a pharmacist in 1982 who in turn sold it to Mary Rae several years later. She told me when I bought the house it was one of her favorites. I guess it was. I took a photo of the 900 Clarkson Street when I was in Denver in 2015. See below.

As returning veterans from World War II moved to the Denver suburbs, many of the old homes in the Capitol Hill area near downtown were converted into apartments. While the area was not blighted, it could have gone that way were it not for Mary's passion to save the old houses of Capitol Hill. Her passion became contagious. Baby boomers returned to that area, bought up the houses, renovated them, and prevented the potential destruction of many beautiful homes. 

Mary Rae and some partners rescued a large house located at the corner of East 8th Avenue at Pearl Street and moved it four blocks to the north where it was totally renovated. It was moved right past my house. This was quite the sight for most the day as three large component parts of the house were relocated to the corner of East 10th Avenue at Emerson. Thanks to Google images you can see the houses at they look today - forty plus years later at 875 East 10th Avenue in Denver.

Mary Rae was an inspirational person. She saw the good in people and the value in preserving our past. She left a legacy of beautiful homes to the people of Denver. I am so thankful I met her and that she was a part of my life.