KAUFFMAN HOUSE MUSEUM

INFORMATION

The Kauffman House Museum is operated
by the Grand Lake Area Historical Society.

OPEN
May 24 - September 1, 2008 --- 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
September Saturdays and Sundays-- 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Annual Meeting June 11, 2008

November 28-29 - Holiday Open House  1 p.m. - 4 p.m.

December 27 - Holiday Open House - 1 p.m. - 4 p.m.

The Kauffman House is an excellent example of an early residence and tourist hotel. It was built in 1892 by Ezra Kauffman and was run as a hotel continuously until his death in 1920. It was operated as a summer tourist hotel by Ezra's widow and daughters until World War II and then sold to Henry Rhone in 1946. The Rhones used the hotel to house guests and people who worked for them in their guest house and restaurant business. The house had several other owners until 1973 when the Grand Lake Area Historical purchased the house and restored it as a museum.

This hotel, the only remaining log hotel built in Grand Lake prior to 1900, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places because of its log architecture and because its first owner was a typical example of the men who joined the westward movement, drawn by the mining, trapping, fishing and tourist phase of the Grand Lake community and Grand County, Colorado.

NEW OFFICE BUILDING

The Historical Society has contracted with the city of Grand Lake to use a portion of the modular building between the post office and the elementary school as an office and work space for us.  Board members are in the process of setting the space up for meetings and projects.  It will also be available for people to do research with our collections.  We plan to invite people to bring in historical information that we might copy to add to information about the Grand Lake area.

SPECIAL PROJECT

The Grand Lake Area Historical Society received grants this past year to fund the reproduction of wallpaper for the parlor and the application of it.  Following a study by Architects Long-Hoeft of Georgetown which identified the wall coverings and paints used throughout the life of the Kauffman House Hotel, the board selected the parlor for a restoration project.  Using a photograph of Ruth and Rosemary Kauffman in the parlor from appoximately 1915, the wallpaper in the picture was selected for reproduction.  It was the fifth layer of paper on the wall.  When uncovering the wallboard in the parlor we discovered that paper in the room. 

Board members have been working to strip the wallpaper down to the bare walls in readiness for the application of the new paper and border.  A portion of the original wall covered with newspapers dating December 1893 and January 1894 will be left for exhibit as well as a cleaned section of the logs with tin cans covering the cracks and a strip of the original wallpaper.

An upstairs bedroom, Mrs. Putman's room, is also being readied for the application of wallpaper reproduced like the original.  Work is underway to find a large enough portion of the original paper for production.

Stop in to see this project in progress.

 

KAUFFMAN HOUSE

From the files of the Grand Lake Area Historical Society

Kauffman House Museum

On the main beach at Grand Lake near Grand Avenue on Pitkin Street and Lake Avenue

The present external appearance is very similar to the original. As is usual with logs, they have grown darker, but they are in good shape except near the eaves of one corner of a small added room. The small poles over the chinking are in some places missing.

Kauffman himself cut and hauled the logs. Then they were whip sawed on three sides leaving the outside rounded as they were laid up. Small poles and later a mixture of sand and cement was used as caulking. The inside was lined with metal. The inside of the house had muslin pasted to the walls and ceilings; then wallpaper was pasted onto that. The daughters remember that when they would finish papering a ceiling it would droop in scallops; but the next morning it would be right and straight again. We find this muslin was not white, as one might imagine, but of various colors and figures – no doubt whatever was available at the store. In some of the rooms newspaper was pasted on before the wallpaper was put on. The ceilings upstairs had just the muslin and wallpaper for several years before the rooms were sealed with boards. The kitchen walls and ceiling were covered with white oilcloth.

The Kauffman house was built in 1892. Son H. Carl Kauffman says they moved in in the spring. It was used as a hotel until Belle Kauffman sold it in 1946. As a new building it consisted of a square two story building. Later a big kitchen (with three rooms upstairs) was added. There was also a front addition for a parlor and two upstairs rooms.

There were two staircases – one in the center of the house and one outside at the rear – fairly handy to the log outdoor privy. Since 1946 the inside staircase has been taken out and put outside at the back.

There is a cellar entered from the front, and back under the main part of the house. A large ice chest was built near the front. The ice was stored at the lakeshore next to the summer laundry. The ice was used during the summer for the ice chest, cold drinks and to freeze ice cream for the Sunday dinners.

Shortly before Christmas each year, the annual ice harvest was begun. Snow was cleared from an area on the lake and blocks approximately 12 inches to 16 inches square were marked off. A long saw, the same one which had cut the house logs, was used to cut the blocks of pure blue-tinged ice. They were packed in sawdust in the ice-house.

A room was added at one end of the kitchen for the first bathroom; but that proved a poor place, and soon an upstairs room was made into the bathroom. The first water system consisted of a large galvanized tank in the attic. This was filled by means of a hand pump on the lakeshore. An overflow pipe projected under the eaves of the house enabling the pumper to tell when to cease pumping. The water was pumped from the lake, but the intake pipe was quite a distance out into the lake. After Mr. Cairns established his water system for his house and store the Kauffman House was hooked on to that. But in the winter water was carried or hauled from the lake. A water hole had to be chopped out each time, and the water was stored in a wooden barrel behind the stove. Daughter Ruth says “The first lighting system I remember (and it was used only in the summer) was gas lights fueled from two cylinder tanks and pressure pumped. A metal tubing the size of a pencil carried the gas to the mantle type lights. I believe that only the downstairs used the gas lights. Kerosene lights were used upstairs in the bedrooms.”

“A wood stove heater in the dining room and a large wood burning hotel range in the kitchen furnished the heat. In the wintertime the dining room became the living room for the family and few guests. The only heat upstairs was that provided by the stove pipes from the two stoves – thus the upstairs bedrooms in winter were frigid.”