The Mann Sisters were a hit at Chautauqua,

by Silvia Pettem 

When Ethel and Marion Mann were young girls, their mother would invite dancers to dinner, then urged her guests to "teach the girls a few steps."   

The sisters' journey to stardom began in 1926 when Ethel won a dance contest. The prize was a year of dance lessons in New York City. Ethel, her sister, and their mother all moved from Boulder to New York. After Ethel's classes, she taught Marion everything she had learned. 

While in New York, they watched cowboys at rodeos in Madison Square Garden and learned rope tricks from "cowboy philosopher" Will Rogers.

Bluebell Avenue resident had unusual past,

By Silvia Pettem

In last month’s “On the Corner,” I wrote that early real estate developer David Dobbins built four almost-identical brick bungalows, one on each of the southeast corners of Bluebell Avenue and 15th, 16th, 17th, and 19th streets.  

The house at 1604 Bluebell was owned by Miriam Rieder who lived there from the late 1930s to her death in 1957. Rieder was an assistant professor of Romance Languages at the University of Colorado. She also was considered an eccentric, and she had an unusual past.  

At the time, acres of undeveloped property surrounded Rieder’s home. She bought the land and preferred it wild and unkempt with native plants and flowers providing a sanctuary for ground-nesting birds. After one neighbor complained of her “weeds,” she wrote a scathing letter to the editor of the “Daily Camera.”

“What is the matter with people who are so blind that they see beauty, and utility, only in their own little clipped lawn?” Rieder asked. “How can people go to church and sit in pews and worship God, and then devote their weekdays to trying to destroy what He has generously given us to enjoy?”

Rieder regularly patrolled her property and carried a pistol to scare off intruders. Parents of neighborhood children complained that she chased and shot at them. In 1950, the then-61-year old woman pleaded guilty in court to “threatening the lives of young people,” but she claimed she only did it to frighten them off of her land.

  The public was unaware during her lifetime that Rieder was the daughter of former German professor Mary Rippon.  At CU’s recent May Commencement, the highly acclaimed Rippon received a long-overdue posthumous honorary doctoral degree. But in 1889, she had secretly married one of her adult students, and they had a child. That child was Miriam Rieder.

Rippon conveniently took a year’s sabbatical to Germany where Rieder was born in 1889. Then Rippon returned to CU and continued to teach. The little girl was left in orphanages and passed around an extended family of aunts and uncles for the first few years of her life. Rippon (who would have lost her job if her marriage had been known) never lived with her husband. Eventually he remarried and was able to raise their daughter.

When Rieder lived at 16th and Bluebell, she was separated from her husband Rudolph. Their son Wilfred is now deceased, but he spent most of his adult life on the East Coast. Think of Rieder, her birds, and her unusual background, as you drive by her former home.

Cutline: Miriam Rieder’s former home at 1604 Bluebell Avenue was one of four (initially!) almost-identical brick bungalows built by real estate developer David Dobbins.

Silvia Pettem is the author of “Separate Lives: The Story of Mary Rippon,” available in local bookstores and at www.thebooklode.com.

Chautauqua a win-win for Boulder

by Silvia Pettem

Ever since 1898, Boulder residents and visitors have participated in events at Boulder's Chautauqua, now in its 125th year. But the national, cultural, and educational movement is not unique to Boulder. It grew out of nineteenth-century camp meetings in New York state and provided classes, oratory, music, and entertainment to isolated communities.

In its early days, there were at least 150 of these gatherings all over the country. So, how did Chautauqua, initially a summer resort, find its way to Boulder? A longtime Chautauqua secretary once stated that the Boulder location was chosen after a committee of leading Texas educators "set out like knights of old in the search for the Holy Grail." They thought Boulder was "the loveliest little city in America." Also, its summers were cooler than at home.

Boulder voters quickly approved a bond issue to buy seventy-five acres of land, then leased the land to what at first was called the Texas-Colorado Chautauqua. Contractors then scrambled to build the dining hall and auditorium, as opening day was scheduled for July 4, 1898. Carpenters finished the auditorium's framing on June 22.

Then, with only twelve days to go, 75 men worked around the clock to complete the walls, roof, towers, stage, and benches. A reporter called the construction "the fastest work ever known in Boulder." On opening day, flags waved and bands played.

Many of the guests came by train and stayed all summer. That first year, they slept in tents. In the evenings, a lively pace of orators, entertainers, and musicians performed on stage. These performers "rode the circuit," traveling by train to gatherings in other parts of the country. In the daytime, families were kept busy with burro rides, railroad excursions, and hikes in the mountains.

Boulder's location is unique, but the Chautauqua name is not. The Iroquois word has multiple meanings, including “a bag tied in the middle” or “two moccasins tied together." It describes the shape of Chautauqua Lake, in southwest New York, at the site of the movement's first (and ongoing) location.

In 125 years, the Chautauqua Auditorium has seen an array of speakers, magicians and animal shows, colorful dancers, persuasive actors, and nearly every kind of singer and musician imaginable. Classical music has come back in style, and the films that started the first year have never stopped. The site was a win-win situation for everyone, even the Texans.

Silvia Pettem can be reached at silviapettem.com

Bryan and Jones were early Chautauqua speakers

by Silvia Pettem

William Jennings Bryan and Samuel P. Jones were an unlikely pair on a speaking tour, but individually and together they roused crowds in Boulder during Chautauqua's early days.

The national educational and cultural resort opened its Boulder venue in 1898. Although audiences enjoyed entertainers, musicians, and films, they were riveted on speakers. Politics, religion, and anti-liquor sentiments dominated the stage.

William Jennings Bryan, a former U.S. Representative from Nebraska, was the most popular speaker in 1899. The Democrat was known as the "silver-tongued orator" and had run for U.S. president but lost against Republican William McKinley. Still, Bryan was well-liked in Boulder County and other mining districts of the West, as he supported the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver.

When he stepped off the train in downtown Boulder, he was greeted by thousands of well-wishers. A reporter wrote, “Cheersyells, hand-clapping, waving of hats and handkerchiefs, a roar of sound and a seething sea greeted the ear and the eye simultaneously."

Six additional trains brought crowds from Fort Collins, the mountain towns, and from Denver, temporarily doubling Boulder’s population. Stores closed at noon, and crowds lined Bryan’s carriage route as he was driven uphill to the auditorium on the Chautauqua grounds. Many people walked from the downtown depot, while others rented horse-drawn hacks or squeezed onto Boulder’s new electric streetcars. Colorado women had recently won the right to vote, and they made up a large part of Bryan’s audience.

At the beginning of the program, a band played “Hail to the Chief.” When the renowned speaker was introduced as “the next president,” men, women, and children burst into wild applause.

Another early speaker was Samuel P. Jones, who was an evangelical minister and anti-liquor crusader. He was known for being humorous and theatrical, but his message was a simple one of living a good life that was as sin-free as possible. 

Both Bryan and Jones returned to Boulder in July 1905 for Jones/Bryan Day. By then Bryan had lost his second presidential election, but the people in Boulder still loved him. The audience gave him a standing ovation and deafening applause.

At the time, speeches went on for three or four hours, and the only seats in the auditorium were wooden benches. After listening to Bryan, Boulder Daily Camera editor L.C. Paddock wrote that the benches were "unthinkably hard," but "Bryan is the only man who ever rendered them tolerable to the spine."

Boulder's first films were shown at Chautauqua, by Silvia Pettem

In 1898, when the Chautauqua cultural and educational movement opened in Boulder, its summer visitors were treated to speakers, entertainers, and musicians in its newly built auditorium. Boulder residents attended, as well. The Chautauqua Association also brought in motion pictures –– the first ever shown in Boulder.

At the time, the public was caught up in the fervor of the Spanish-American War, creating a demand for patriotic newsreels. The first shown at Chautauqua was the Battle of Santiago Bay, leading viewers to believe it was filmed in Cuba. The film, however, featured cardboard models of ships that were partially disguised with cigar smoke.  

Dear neighbors, back in October of 2019 I interviewed neighbor Sabine Schaffner for this newsletter. I learned she wanted to share more about the neighborhood than about herself. But I discovered in my time with her that there was so much about her that I wanted to share with you. Once I was close to completing the piece I wanted her to read it. She did. But then she asked me not to publish it for it was too personal. I was disappointed but I very much respected her privacy. Today, with her family’s permission, I am grateful to be able to share this story with you. It’s mostly the same as it was then but with editing from Beret Strong and career fact-checking from Karen Simmons - thank you both!

Guardian of the Galaxy - Neighbor recounts first spacecraft images of our planets

By Jon Hatch, On The Corner

As she stood in her slippers, in her mid-century home, gazing out through large, west-facing windows to her backyard sanctuary, Sabine (pronounced Sabeena) Schaffner, 87, described to me memories from the 65 years she had lived in Boulder. For 22 of those years, she was tucked into a dead end dirt road below Chautauqua Park in Boulder, Colorado. Just a few minutes into listening to Sabine, I realized there was going be a lot to be shared so I suggested we sit down. She placed us at each end of the couch in the living room that was lightly accented with antique furniture, ancient rugs and vaulted ceilings with stout wood beams. There were tea and nibbles. She turned up her hearing aid and asked me to speak…

Dear OTC readers, I wanted to take a step back in time to share this story which I published in OTC

back in the fall of 2009. A harrowing story of two young men who climbed the Third Flatiron and

painted the letter “C". It is one of my favorite stories in the many years I've been publishing this

newsletter. It was a pleasure to interview Dale Johnson, one of the men, who lived in the

neighborhood with his wife Frandee Johnson. Dale passed away in 2012. He would've been 91

years old today. Back in 2009 the average sales price in Lower Chautauqua was $738,000. The

average price per square foot was $358/sqft and the highest price home sale that year was

$1,050,000. It was time of The Great Recession. I was five years into my real estate career and my

kids were 4 and 6 years old. Today they are 18 and 20 and this market my 18th year in the biz.

Gee, how time flies. Thank you all for reading this all these years and for your personal

compliments along the way. Enjoy the climb up this rock again - it’s a good one!

A supporter of women’s rights, Cockerell happily tagged

along. Shortly afterward, he was hired at CU as professor

of zoology. In 1887, Cockerell had moved from England

to Colorado, a recommended treatment for tuberculosis.

Later he returned to England and married his longtime

sweetheart, but within a few years she and both of their

children died. Grieving, but realizing that own health was

better in a high, dry climate, he moved to Colorado

permanently in 1893.

Early Chautauqua visitors were music-lovers

by Silvia Pettem

In 1898, when Chautauqua opened as a summer resort, the auditorium and the dining hall were its only buildings.

Out-of-town attendees lived in tents, and luxuries were few. But those who came and stayed demanded live music.

"Without music," stated an early Chautauqua Bulletin, "Chautauqua could not exist. All lovers of music are invited to the feast, spread daily under the cooling shadows of the rock-ribbed mountains."

The fifteen-piece Kansas City Orchestra (known for livening up the mostly Texas crowds with the song "Dixie") gave

weekly full-length concerts in the Auditorium during the venue's first year. The orchestra also played six weekly outdoor concerts, as well as "sacred" concerts on Sundays.