Milestones Icon: Callahan House

With its painted gables, turreted balcony and immaculately landscaped Italian garden, it’s easy to see why the Callahan House was once one of the premier meeting spots in Longmont.

The couple for whom the house is named – Thomas and Alice Callahan – moved to the area from Missouri in 1889 and opened a dry goods shop on Main Street called The Golden Rule, which they expanded into a chain of general merchandise stores.

Interestingly, it was Thomas Callahan who gave James Cash Penney a start managing one of his stores. Penney eventually purchased three of the Golden Rule franchises, leveraging them into what would become the J.C. Penney empire of more than 1,800 stores.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Business Cares: June 2024

BizWest Business Cares June 2024 recognizes LGBTQ+ businesses and the Colorado LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce.

The Callahans lived in an apartment near the Main Street store during their first years in Longmont, but by 1896 their thriving business allowed them to move into the native red brick and sandstone house at 312 Terry St., built in 1892, which they purchased from the original owner for 17 railcars of white pine lumber.

The couple immediately began an extensive renovation, expanding the two-story, eight-room house into a 12-room mansion and installing a hot water system, central heating, electric lights and indoor plumbing. The renovation included new paint and wallpaper in every room, murals, beveled glass windows and the first large-scale use of tile in the area in the kitchen, bathrooms and hallways. A few years later, Alice Callahan purchased the corner lot next door to create the formal Italian garden, which she adorned with busts of Greek and Roman gods and an electric fountain.

One of the most conspicuous additions to the property was the carriage house. The name is misleading, as it never actually housed a carriage; instead, it sheltered the Callahans’ collection of luxury automobiles. The building included an apartment upstairs for the family’s chauffer and a turntable built into the garage floor so that the driver didn’t have to put the car in reverse to back out. In fact, the Callahans were so wild about automobiles that they were the first family in Longmont to own one, a steam-powered “Locomobile.”

As their fortune – and their home – grew, so did the Callahans’ standing in Longmont society. The couple joined numerous fraternal, social and religious organizations, and Alice Callahan became known as a generous hostess, opening up her newly remodeled home for elegant dinner parties, children’s birthday parties, bridge clubs and literary group meetings.

Given their love of all things social, it’s not surprising that when the couple decided to move to Reno, Nevada, in 1938, they donated their home to the city to be used as a meeting house and social center for local women. The house became one of the first buildings to achieve landmark status after the city created the designation in 1973. Unlike many historic buildings, it remains true to its original purpose, as every year thousands of citizens visit the Callahan House for civic and club meetings, luncheons, dinners, weddings and other events.