Denver Neighborhoods - Historic Hilltop

“Yesterday’s camel” was the first known resident of Hilltop. Known in Latin as Camelops hesternus, this grass-eating, single-humped animal lived in the area more than 10,000 years ago. More modern residents found the fossilized remains in 1936 while laying a new drain pipe. Another camel was found at 100 Cherry a few years later. Mammoth bones have also been unearthed in the area.

Approximately 10,000 years later, after the completion of the High Line Canal in 1885, developer Milo Smith platted the Eastern Capitol Hill subdivision, which he named after the fashionable Denver suburb more than a mile to its west. Another pair of developers –DuBois and Malone – mapped the top third of present Hilltop six years later. However, like Smith, they did not make a formal connection between districts, and as a result, every street between Third and Fourth Avenues has an awkward jag. Developer John Leet, who lived on the western edge of Cranmer Park, likewise failed to make things fit. His 1896 diary records the frustration of land development: “8 years of Leetsdale… Instead of a fortune it has brought me bankruptcy.”

George Ernest Cranmer, Denver’s Manager of Improvements and Parks from 1935-47, loved the Mountain View crest that gave Hilltop its name. He recalled riding up with his wife Jean on horseback to watch the sunsets, enjoying it so much that they decided to build a house there. A shrewd financial mind also lay behind the decision: he knew that the city had already spent $20,000 for park land in the area, and property values would likely rise with the park. So in 1916, he bought the hilltop, built his 22-room Mediterranean mansion at its apex, and awaited neighborhood growth.

In 1924, there were only 42 homes in the neighborhood, in part because of inaccessible public transport. But the advent of the automobile and the relocation of the University of Colorado School of Medicine to the area assured Hilltop’s fortune. By 1938, 376 households had been established; double that existed by 1950. So many medical professionals moved into the area it became known colloquially as “Pill Hill.”

With Lowry Air Force Base nearby, neighborhood children grew used to the roar of airplane engines. But on December 3, 1951, a B-29 bomber failed to make the landing strip, ripping through five houses at 1st and Eudora and exploding in a ball of fire at Bayaud. The Denver Post reported the ground “strewn with splintered houses, hot electric wires, and chunks of tin and scrap from the fuselage. In seconds, the entire area was a sheet of flames.” Eight crewmen died and several residents were injured. By 1960, low-altitude flights had been rerouted to Buckley Field, so the sound of nearby aircraft was no longer heard on Hilltop.

Although the delicious soda fountain (Aylard’s Pharmacy), great bookshop (Tumbleweed), and colonial revival Texaco station are no longer around, you can still visit Mountain View Park and look over the Hilltop that grew up much as George Cranmer had designed.

Hilltop Real Estate Prices for January 2008
(data from August 1, 2007 to January 31, 2008)

73 detached single family homes were sold with a median list price of $835,000. On average homes took 177 days to sell and sold for a median price of $775,000. Median price is a better measure of sold price than average, which is skewed by a few high-priced homes at the top end and low-priced homes at the bottom. Lowest sold price for detached single family homes was $127,500; highest sold price was $3,525,000. For condos and townhomes (attached family homes) the lowest sold price was $105,000 while the highest was $275,000. The median sold price was $171,500, and the average was $178,872.
 
The ratio of sold to list price was 98.65% for detached homes. The ratio of sold to original price was 43.10% [may be a typo in the original data, possibly skewing some of the data in this report] , which means that sellers are still listing homes at too high a price The net sold (after seller concessions such as down payment or closing cost assistance, and the like) to original list price was 42.60% [caution:original data and my conclusion may be erroneous]. To simplify, if a seller originally listed their home at $800,000, they realized $340,800 from the sale.
 
By the time the seller finally reached a marketable price after having listing it too high, the sold to list ratio improved to 98.65%, and the net sold to list price was 97.35%