Molly Brown House Museum

At thirteen forty Pennsylvania Street, in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, stands the Molly Brown House Museum. The house was built in eighteen eighty-nine by architect William Lang for the original owners Isaac and Mary Large. Lang worked in a blend of Queen Anne and Richardsonian Romanesque styles.

The exterior is gray Castle Rock rhyolite, a volcanic stone quarried south of Denver, trimmed with deep pink Manitou sandstone. Mining investor James Brown purchased the house for his wife Margaret in eighteen ninety-four. Margaret Brown survived the sinking of the Titanic in nineteen twelve and became known for her activism on behalf of survivors and for labor and civil rights causes.

After her death the house passed through several owners and fell into neglect. By nineteen seventy it was slated for demolition. A group of Denver citizens incorporated Historic Denver, a nonprofit, specifically to save it.

They restored the house using paint chip analysis, architectural research, and photographs taken in nineteen ten as their guides. The museum opened in nineteen seventy-one, and that rescue effort became a model for preservation across the city. Historic Denver still operates it today, offering daily tours through rooms set up much as the Brown family left them.