In the market for a century-old Mountain Avenue bungalow? Possible speakeasy included.

If the walls of 1231 W. Mountain Ave. could talk, I'd sure like to ask them about the speakeasy in the basement.

Or supposed speakeasy, I should say.

For decades, the mysterious room has peeked out from behind narrow, barred windows underneath the century-old Craftsman, boasting a big oak wet bar complete with back mirror and brass foot rail, a heavy steel door and an antique safe cemented into its west wall.

The unusual space caught the attention of Fort Collins real estate investor Austin Hill last spring, when the home's longtime owner died and it went on the market for the first time in more than 30 years.

Austin and his brother, Ryan Hill, who run Fort Collins real estate development firm Small Mountain Investments, purchased it in April. At the time, Austin said he was told by a listing agent that the room had been a Prohibition-era speakeasy.

"It was, in large part, to do with the speakeasy," Austin said when asked why they bought the house during a tour of it last week. "I wanted to be attached to a project that had so much history to it."

When the Hills purchased it, 1231 W. Mountain Ave. was a veritable time capsule with a kitchen full of hardy midcentury appliances, original oak floors and warm wood trimmings befitting its Craftsman roots.

Since then, it's undergone a nearly yearlong renovation that has included the removal of its former kitchen wall, the construction of a basement bathroom, a master suite addition off its second floor, and the refinishing of its original floors and trim.

With the exception of some new drywall, the polishing of its concrete floors and new trim work, the basement speakeasy space has remained largely the same as the day the home changed hands, Austin said proudly.

"(We wanted) to be thoughtful about the design and make sure it wasn’t going to go to a person who would just take (the bar) out," he said, adding that multiple people suggested he do just that.

Austin said he never entertained the idea. Instead, he found himself standing in the room every once in a while, looking into the dusty mirror hanging behind its bar.

"It’s a really cool feeling to think of all this different history that went on here," he said. "(To think of) what it was.”

Now, with the home's renovation coming to an end and its return to the market slated for next month, Austin said he had one last thing on his to-do list before passing 1231 W. Mountain Ave. off to its next steward.

He wanted to learn more about the curious basement bar room that drew him to the home in the first place.

As it turns out, that was easier said than done — something I learned after taking on the challenge of researching the home myself earlier this month.

Before I knew it, I was scouring city directories and scanning historic newspaper articles about whiskey raids, a wealthy toy importer and divorce-induced property disputes. I traced family trees and property records. I called a local historian to help me unfurl Fort Collins' long and winding history with liquor. I pestered the descendants of people who once called 1231 W. Mountain Ave. home.

See, this is what I was saying. It would be so much easier if the walls just talked.

Family lore

After purchasing 1231 W. Mountain Ave., Austin said he made a couple of concerted attempts to narrow down its history, but each came up empty.

What little he knew about the house could largely be traced back to the family lore passed down by its longtime and most recent owner, Alan Howe.

Alan purchased the home in 1989 and owned it up until his death last year. During Alan's time there, the Howe family always called the curious basement speakeasy space "the bar room," according to Alan's son, David Howe.

The family knew that its former owner was a woman named Elsie and that she lived at 1231 W. Mountain Ave. with her husband for a long time, David said. Alan had also apparently heard rumblings about the bar room once being used for some sort of underground gambling outfit, his son added.

"The reason it struck me as true is if you look at the house and look down near the base of the wall of the house, you can see all the little windows have bars on them," David said.

The home's driveway, located off of Jackson Street, is also relatively private with the added cover of a nearby gate, David said. It pulls up to a coal chute on the back of the house that fed into what the Howes often called "the vault" — a small, windowless room once lined with shelves and cordoned off from the rest of the basement by another heavy, steel door.

"That's where they would apparently pass through alcohol and maybe other contraband in a secret manner," David suggested.

The bar room's wall safe — "a behemoth of a thing" — is also notable with eight inches of solid concrete built around it, David said.

Despite having the safe's combination, it took Alan months to find a locksmith who could figure out how to open its complex door, David recalled. There was nothing inside.

Alan was known for hosting parties for his friends in the home's basement bar room, David said. Alan — an artist and retired graphic designer — also spent hours toiling away on his hobbies there, where he had set up a table for making jewelry, bookmarks and coasters.

David recalled driving by his dad's house late at night and, more times than not, seeing Alan's work light glowing through the basement windows.

Throughout his time at 1231 W. Mountain Ave., David said his father adopted a near sacred reverence for the home.

"Several times throughout the years of owning it, he had plans on the table to remodel it, but every time he decided it would have too much impact on the originality of the house," David said.

Despite never knowing her, David said his dad spoke often of the home's previous owner, Elsie.

"He always was very respectful of trying to keep the house in the same way that she left it," David added. "He would often say, ‘Well, I’ve redone the plumbing, and I asked Elsie and she said, 'Yes, that is just fine.’ "

“I think her spirit and her essence is still there, and he always wanted to respect that," he added.

Tracing the history of 1231 W. Mountain Ave.

According to old building permits, 1231 W. Mountain Ave. was constructed in 1924 by Fort Collins builder Charles Fuller.

Fuller built several other Old Town Fort Collins homes in the 1920s, including the two Craftsman-style bungalows at nearby 1227 and 1223 W. Mountain Ave.

He sold the "elegant new residence" at 1231 W. Mountain Ave. to a young widow named Elsie Baber Baer the following spring, The Fort Collins Express-Courier reported.

Elsie had previously lived in Denver, where she met and married wealthy Boston toy and doll importer Julius Baer after working as his nurse.

When Julius died in 1924, he left the majority of his $1 million estate — roughly $17 million in today's dollars — to Elsie, who was around 20 years old at the time, according to reports in The Boston Globe. The following spring, Elsie purchased and moved into 1231 W. Mountain Ave. with her mother, Myrtle Baber, and younger brother, William Baber.

In 1926, Elsie married Norman Bonner, whose family had invested in oil in Fort Collins during the area's 1920s oil boom, according to Express-Courier reports. A few years later, the couple seemed to be hurtling toward divorce, with accounts of property disputes, a fight over ownership of 1231 W. Mountain Ave. and a tug-of-war over "Evaline," the couple's 23-ton gas screw yacht, peppering the pages of Northern Colorado and Boston newspapers.

By the late 1930s, Elsie had remarried a Pueblo man named Walter Wildin. The couple came and went from Fort Collins often, splitting their time between Florida, Denver and Pueblo.

While Elsie never had children, her brother, William Baber, had a son, William Baber Jr., and a daughter, Elsie Baber, who would often visit their aunt and uncle in Fort Collins.

James Nass, now 80 and living in North Carolina, remembers coming up from Denver with his high school sweetheart (and future wife), Elsie Baber, to visit the Wildins when he was a teenager in the late 1950s. Elsie (Baber) Nass died in 2014.

"Walter didn’t want us going down in the basement, but we did," Nass said, recalling the bar and walls dotted with a couple of slot machines.

"It was not talked about much," he added. "We used to joke that it was an 'under the radar' kind of place."

Thanks to some rumors about Walter once running a club that catered to an unsavory crowd in Pueblo, Nass said he wouldn't be surprised if the basement at 1231 W. Mountain Ave. was used as a speakeasy.

"I would expect it actually," he added with a laugh.

When Elsie purchased her Mountain Avenue bungalow in 1925, the U.S. was well into the 13-year Prohibition. Fort Collins had even gotten a head start years earlier when — after decades of calls for an alcohol ban there — its temperance-minded city council passed a law outlawing the sale and purchase of alcohol in 1896.

That would last until 1969, when voters finally approved an ordinance once again allowing for the purchase and sale of liquor and full-strength beer within city limits.

Prohibition would have been enforced rigorously during its long and storied stretch in the city, according to volunteer Fort Collins Police Services historian Tom McLellan.

Finding firmer details about if those laws were ever broken at 1231 W. Mountain Ave. is tricky, however, as Fort Collins police didn't start using an official record-keeping system until around the early 1970s, McLellan said.

There are no mentions of Elsie or her address being involved in any liquor-related arrests or crimes in historic newspapers. Years before they married, Elsie's third husband, Walter Wildin, did make a brief appearance in the pages of The Rocky Mountain News when he was one of 72 people arrested in an extensive whiskey raid in Pueblo at the end of 1927, according to a report from that time.

While Walter seems like the most likely culprit for running a speakeasy out of 1231 W. Mountain Ave., it appears that he and Elsie didn't marry until after the nationwide Prohibition ended in 1933.

"My guess is there wouldn’t really be a need for speakeasies in the 1930s and 1940s," McLellan said. "By then, alcohol was legal just outside city limits."

Still, McLellan said it's not impossible and, while illegal whiskey stills were often found in remote areas of Larimer County, a speakeasy could have been located anywhere — especially affluent Mountain Avenue, which might have been under less of a microscope than more crime-riddled sections of town.

Nass' recollection of slot machines in the bar room also intrigued McLellan as gambling for profit was illegal in Colorado until 1948 and, even after some changes to the law, the state would not have allowed the possession of slot machines for profit when Nass said he spotted them in the Wildins' basement in the 1950s, McLellan said.

Larimer County property records show Elsie remained an owner of 1231 W. Mountain Ave. into the late 1980s. By then, she and Walter had divorced, and she was splitting her time between Denver and Miami Beach, Nass recalled.

"She had quite a life," he said.

Walter died in 1986 and is buried in Pueblo, cemetery records show. He had no descendants. Elsie followed shortly after in 1988. The following year, Alan Howe purchased 1231 W. Mountain Ave. from her estate, according to county property records.

Now, the Hill brothers almost have the home ready for its next owner.

It's been thoroughly remodeled and has a new, open kitchen, the listing will most likely read.

It boasts a sprawling, second-story master suite and its former "vault," as the Howe family called it, has been transformed into a modern basement bathroom.

Still not sold? Head around the corner in its cozy basement and you'll find something truly one of a kind.

The room — bar included — would be great for entertaining. It has room for at least a couple of slot machines and an antique safe to store any valuables.

Don't mind the bars on the windows. They're all part of the house's charm and, depending on who you ask, its history.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Mountain Avenue bungalow in Fort Collins may have had speakeasy