By Dana Abrahamson

Editor's note: The core of Historic Georgetown, Inc.'s mission is development of its Five-Part Residential Interpretive Plan. Strategic planners reaffirmed this priority in May, and Executive Director Dana Abrahamson outlined its progress in her presentation to the membership on June 17.

Hamill House

• Construction date: 1867-1879
• Acquisition date: 1971
• Considered the cornerstone of HGI's residential interpretive plan, the Hamill House helps to interpret 19th-century residential living in Georgetown, including the unique architecture, furnishings, Victorian plants and landscaping, and social and cultural lifestyles.
• To date, over $500,000 has been spent on the restoration of this large, lavish home and its four outbuildings, which include a carriage house and W.A. Hamill's office building. The latter now houses HGI's administrative offices.

Bowman-White House

• Construction date: 1892
• Acquisition date: 1974
• Purchased by Historic Georgetown, Inc., at a cost of $35,000, this delightful and expansive Victorian home provides insight into the lives of an upper-middle class mining/professional family of 19th-century Georgetown. The Bowman-White House is an Italianate structure accented with Queen Anne details, and at the time of construction, it contained over 2,400 square feet of living space.
• Through the years, approximately $100,000 has been spent on restoration of the Bowman-White House, including some structural and mechanical rehabilitation, wall-covering replication, and exterior painting.

Kneisel House

• Construction date: 1870s/1880s
• Acquisition date: 1998
• The Kneisel House is typical of a middle-class dwelling of turn-of-the-century Georgetown. Constructed in the 1870's, this house was built by local merchant Henry Kneisel, who opened a bakery and later operated a grocery and hardware store. He ran the store in partnership with his son-in-law, Emil Anderson. The Kneisel and Anderson store on 6th Street, in business for over one hundred years, has been managed by four generations of the Kneisel and Anderson families.

• Construction date: 1870s, 1880s, 1890s
• Acquisition date: 1976
• The Tucker-Rutherford Cottage is typical in scale and representative of the many miners' homes that were once built throughout the valley. Due to poor construction, few of these small wood-frame structures that were so typical of the Clear Creek valley remain today.
  o Donated to HGI by Frank E. (Buff) and Mary Lou Rutherford of Georgetown, this house focuses on the simpler, more rustic lifestyle of an everyday miner and his family. Limited work has been done on the Tucker-Rutherford Cottage: to date, $22,215 has been spent to preserve this residence.

• Construction date: ca. 1870
• Acquisition date: 1972
• This log cabin was presumably a pioneer prospector's home. It is one of the few remaining log cabins and quite typical of many that once dotted the Clear Creek valley. The simple log structure represents one of the earliest and most common types of construction in the mining West.
• Donated by Fred and Ginger Booth, this one-room cabin characterizes the lifestyle of the itinerant miner or prospector, the lifestyle most often neglected within the context of house museums: to date, $5,785 has been allocated to stabilize and restore this structure.