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Our History:

1439 Court Place
By Phil Goodstein

Welcome to 1439 Court Place, a building that is a vibrant part of Denver's past and present. The house is a remnant of the date when the 1400 block of Court Place was one of the premier residential addresses in the city. During the 1870's and 1880's, the areas along 14th and 15th streets near West Colfax Avenue were among the most desirable home sites in the Mile High City. One person who desired to move to the neighborhood was James H. Curry.

A successful building supplies dealer, Curry owned the Castle Rock Lava Stone Quarries right at the time when Denver was in a building boom in the 1880's. Building in stone was then considered a mark of distinction. His business, also known as the Douglas County Lava Quarries, provided stone for many distinguished Denver structures including the wings of the Union Station, Saint Elizabeth's Church on the Auraria Campus, Trinity Methodist Church at 18th Avenue and Broadway, South Broadway Christian Church at Lincoln Street and Ellsworth Avenue, and the Kittredge Building at 16th Street and Glenarm Place. Countless stone mansions were also constructed with stone from Curry's quarries.

In 1887, Curry purchased the 25-foot-wide lot at 1439 Court Place from real estate magnate Samuel Morgan. Curry commissioned architect Fred A. Hale to design his new house. The structure was typical of the upper middle class homes of the day. While it has a stone front, it is primarily of brick construction. The lack of windows and the sand brick on the sides of the house show that 1439 Court Place was essentially a row house next to similar houses along the street.

The house was distinctive enough to be reported in a local architectural journal, the Western Architect and Building News. It noted that the structure was "a genuine two-story brownstone front". Inside were richly carved wood and window screens with oak Venetian blinds. The walls and ceilings were described as "a chaste and happy style, of fresco and Lincrusta-Walton relief work. The staircase was approached through an archway of intricate arabesque fretwork in oak".

Curry's new home was completed right about the time the city's elite was demanding ever bigger, more prestigious houses atop Capitol Hill. Simultaneously, by the early 1890's, Denver's economy was out of control. The market collapsed in 1893. When the city finally recovered from the crash, Capitol Hill was the town's premier neighborhood. An address on Court Place was now second rate. Before long, many downtown houses were demolished for apartments and businesses.

James Curry did not live to witness this development. He died in 1892. His widow, Alice, inherited the house. She lost it through the debts to Sarah Hunt. When the latter died in 1902, she willed it to Vaso Chucovich. So began the next phase in the evolution of 1439 Court Place.

Chucovich was a leader of the Denver underworld. A Serb, he was born in Rosan, Dalmatia, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, on July 9, 1858. His home was then part of the Austrian empire. It was later part of Yugoslavia and is today a section of Croatia. From Denver, Chucovich eventually played a part in the development of his homeland.

Poverty-stricken, Chucovich left Dalmatia as a youth in search of a better life. Eventually he walked across most of Europe where he jumped ship in France for the New World in 1877. He landed in San Francisco and went to work in the California mines. He eventually landed a job at a mill in Virginia City, Nevada, where he lost all his teeth due to mercury poisoning. Most of all, during his mining days, Chucovich emerged as a skilled gambler. Before long, he supported himself as a gambler, flourishing in Reno, Seattle and Omaha. Seeing Denver as a wide open city, he moved here in January 1895 with a $74,000 stake.

Chucovich immediately clashed with the czar of the Denver underworld, Ed Chase, who had dominated the city's gambling establishments since 1860. Though Chase tried to crush Chucovich, he failed to do so. Eventually, the two became partners. Their most famous establishment was the Navarre at 1727 Tremont Place (today the Museum of Western Art) across the street from the Brown Palace. In addition to being a casino, the Navarre was also a fancy restaurant and bordello. A tunnel linked it with the Brown Palace.

Chucovich flourished by offering honest gambling games in Denver at a time when most casinos were crooked. Simultaneously, he was a close friend of the boss of the city's Democratic Party, Mayor Robert Speer. Over the years, Chucovich repeatedly donated to Speer's campaigns and assorted charities. In exchange, his gambling operations were largely left alone by city hall.

Chucovich also benefited from having a superb lawyer, Mary Lathrop. She was the state's second woman lawyer. Whenever Chucovich was in trouble, she would take care of his problem. Though she rejected his proposals of marriage, he hired her to help draft the constitution of the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia at the end of World War I.

There is no evidence that Chucovich ever lived at 1439 Court Place. By the turn of the century he was living along "Millionaires' Row" as Grant Street on Capitol Hill was known. He was initially at 1234 Grant and later at 1096 Grant Street. He leased the 1439 Court Place house out to diverse individuals. There were rumors that some of them were disreputable characters and that there was once a bordello in the house.

When Chucovich died at age 75 on December 20, 1933, he left a $1.3 million estate including the 1439 Court Place property. The probate was long and convoluted. A $500,000 bequest built a hospital in Yugoslavia, which was destroyed by the Nazis. Denver artists clashed over the $100,000 he had given the city for a memorial fountain for Mayor Speer in the Civic Center. (The fountain was never built. The money was eventually used to build the Speer wing at Denver General Hospital).

The Chucovich estate remained in probate through World War II. After the war, the city objected to money from it going to assist Yugoslavia because that country was now communist. Meanwhile, 1439 Court Place remained standing while all the other houses in this part of town were systematically destroyed. By the time the Chucovich estate was closed in 1957, it was the only house still standing in old downtown. The rest of the block was then a vibrant commercial center, including a bowling alley, a bicycle shop, restaurants and offices. Across the street, where the parking lot is, was the University of Denver's Civic Center campus.

For many years Guiry Brothers Wall Paper occupied 1439 Court Place. By the 1970's, it was home of assorted lawyers. This was most appropriate for a property on Court Place. The street, in fact, got its name since half a block away from the house, at the east corner of 15th Street and Court Place was the old county courthouse. It served the city from when it was constructed in 1883 until the current courthouse, the Denver City and County Building, was opened at the other end of Court Place in 1931. (The road was originally called Wapoola and then Wasoola Street, being renamed Court Place in 1886).

The house is today owned and occupied by Walter Gerash, the area's most distinguished attorney over the past generation. Practicing law in Denver since 1956, Gerash is sometimes known as Mile High Thunder. He has been named one of the best lawyers in America in both the fields of criminal defense and personal injury cases. Gerash has also done an immense amount of pro bono work, defending members of the Crusade for Justice, Black Panthers, anti-war protesters and those working to close down the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and Rocky Flats. Often his cases have made the headlines and Court TV. In recent years, his most celebrated cases have been those of John Denver and James King. The latter was falsely accused of killing four guards when the United Bank of Denver was robbed on Father's Day 1991.

With his partners in the law firm of Gerash, Prugh and Gerash, Walter Gerash has worked to restore the architectural integrity of 1439 Court Place since moving into the house in 1979. He refused to sell out when developers destroyed the rest of the properties on the block in the early 1980's for a high-rise that was never built. The house is both a Denver landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.