Mile Marker 82: Denver's Patterson-Croke Mansion

We went for a concert series, we explored Capitol Hill, we found a haunted mansion, here we tell you about it. This episode regards the haunted Patterson-Croke Mansion, now a bed & breakfast in historic Denver's Millionaire Row. 

Transcript

Key: Drifter, Male voice. Gypsie, Female voice

Uplifting rock/western tune plays for 15 seconds, music begins to taper down then:

(Drifter) Welcome to the Rebel At Large Adventure Podcast. I’m Drifter

(Gypsie) And I’m  Gypsie

(Drifter) Talking about Ghost towns,

(Gypsie) Graveyards,

(Drifter) Outlaws, Heroes

(Gypsie) And Ladies of the night.

Music tapers to an end

(Drifter) Howdy folks, Thanks for joining us for yet another adventure. In this episode we head to the capital hill area of historic Denver Colorado and tell you a bit about some of its rich “haunted” history.

(Gypsie) A few months back I heard about a book called The Ghosts of Denver: Capital Hill by Phil Goodstein. With a name like that I had to get the book. I have since been reading as much of it as possible. It is full of a lot of information about downtown Denver, who started the area and what has happened over the next 100 years to transform the area into what it is today. Today we want to talk about one of the mansions in the book and what we were able to discover while exploring the area ourselves. 

(Drifter) Located at 420 East 11th Ave sits the Patterson Inn. This place wasn’t always an inn, when it was first built it was a house for a fella serving in the state legislature, we will get more into him later. Today the house is now an inn where there are 9 different rooms to book a stay in. We did not stay there when we went to Denver, though the rooms are beautifully decorated and well laid out they are a bit on the pricey side. If you do want to stay there you have to book what room you would like and they each offer something different. 

(Gypsie) One of the rooms has a private outdoor patio, while another room had large vaulted ceilings and a view of the capitol building. Some rooms have jetted tubs, some have showers, and some even have a claw foot bath tub to relax in. There is only one room on the main floor of the building while the rest are on the second and third floor. But keep in mind the elevator only goes to the second floor, so if you stay on the third floor you will need to carry your bags up some steps. Some of the rooms have a queen bed, others have a king bed, and they even have one room that has two separate beds. Also if you do stay there breakfast is included in your stay. It is made to order and the menu changes each day. 

(Drifter) Located in the basement of the building, with the public entrance into it being on the outside of the building is the 12 Spirits Tavern. This was once the location of Senator Pattersons smoking lounge where he would invite prominent guests of the area to come and enjoy themselves.  Here you can get an authentic pre-prohibition cocktail, wine, champagne, as well as a large selection of hard liquors. They even have a few small things to eat. 

(Gypsie) While we were standing outside of the Inn taking pictures we were stopped by a gentleman asking us if we were guests there. We told him no and then he asked if we were there taking pictures of where the dogs jumped out the window and killed themselves. We told him, kind of, and explained to him that we had a book talking about the mansions in the area and their history. He then told us that he owned the building and that he was going to be the bartender at the 12 Spirits Tavern that night and invited us to come back. 

(Drifter) Naturally we had to come back, they open at 4 and close at 9. The entrance to the Tavern gives off the feeling that you are walking into a speakeasy but once inside you feel like you are sitting in a high end luxury bar that everyone is welcomed inside. (Gypsie) We sat at the bar hoping to get the chance to talk to the owner and get to know more about the building, but he was busy with other guests and that's just fine! Drifter ordered a glass of the Shannon Ridge Cabernet and I ordered the Lemongrass Whiskey Sour, which was made with bourbon, egg white, lemon juice, and lemongrass simple syrup, it came in a fancy glass and was delicious. 

(Drifter) Now let's get into the history of the building and tell you more about the men that used to own it and why folks think it’s haunted. 

(Gypsie) Thomas B Croke was born on March 4, 1852 on a farm in Rock County Wisconsin. I searched and searched to find more family history on him but I have yet to even find out his parents' names. In 1874 he moved to Denver to work as a school teacher but he ended up getting a job as a clerk for the Daniels and Fisher Department Store. 

(Drifter) Eventually he left Daniels and Fisher and opened his own business called Thomas B. Croke and Company. Here he sold carpets, window shades, draperies, and upholstered goods. His business earned him enough money that he was able to purchase land in the “Millionaire’s Row” area of downtown Denver. He also had a great deal of property where Broomfield Colorado is located. As well as owning and running his store he was also  the president of the Denver Reservoir and Irrigation Company. 

(Gypsie) Construction was started on his beautiful mansion sometime in 1890. He hired architect Isaac Hodgson to design the building and contractor J.M. Cochran to oversee the building of it. (Gypsie) The house is based on the 16th century Château d’Azay le Rideau in the Loire River Valley. It was completed in 1891 and the final cost was 18,000 dollars. (Over $600k in today’s monies) (Gypsie) It had 10 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms. It is three stories high and also has a basement. There is an archway that connects the house to a Carriage house. The Carriage house was designed just as beautifully as the house was. The outside is made of red sandstone sourced from the Garden of the Gods area in Colorado. The house comes complete with turrets, spires, bay windows and arched doorways. 

(Drifter) Once inside you will see the large hall with a massive grand staircase and the light of the stained glass window illuminating it. On either side of the great hall you’ll find the library, parlor, and dining room. Each room has a magnificent fireplace as well as a stone fireplace in the entry hall. The second floor has five large bedrooms for the family as well as a narrow staircase to the third floor. On this floor was a playroom for the children and three small bedrooms for servants. The basement had a ballroom, an area for laundry and storage as well as the smoking room we mentioned.

(Gypsie) But there was something about the house that Croke didn’t enjoy and once it was completed he never lived in the house. Other stories say he lived in the house for only six months. If the stories are true about him only living in the house for about six months they also say that his wife Margaret Dunphy Croke passed away in 1887, and that he moved into the house with his two young children as well as his parents. Shortly after moving in his mother passed away and it may have just been too much for him to stay there alone in the big house. In 1892 Thomas Croke sold the house to Thomas Patterson

(Drifter) Mr. Croke went on to live at 4101 17th ave. On June 24, 1897 he was married to Euretta Burdick in Denver Colorado. According to Familysearch.org the couple had 10 children 3 boys and 7 girls but looking at some of the names and dates of the children we wonder if maybe they only had 2 sons because the names of two of the boys are very similar and their birth dates are only off by one year. And we also could not find records of his first marriage and the two children from that marriage people talk about. 

(Gypsie) Thomas Croke went on to serve on the Colorado State Senate in the early 1910’s. He was a big advocate for irrigation projects where he was able to eventually push the state to build the Croke Canal. This canal fed water into Standley lake; the water was then used for agricultural irrigation in the surrounding area of northwest Denver. In the 1970’s the lake was turned into recreational use where you can now go paddle boarding, kayaking, power boating and water skiing, as well as fishing. The Croke Canal is still there and in use supplying water to Westminster’s largest body of water. The lake is also the third largest reservoir in the Denver metropolitan area. 

(Drifter) Mr. Croke was also a central figure in the building of the Loretto Heights campus; we are not sure what role he played in this. Construction for Loretto Heights began in 1890 and by 1892 they were ready to accept students. The building served its pupils From 1891 to 2017. It was first a girls’ boarding school and later turned into a high school, nursing school as well as a military training ground. With all the daughters that Mr. Croke had and the fact he played a role in the building one might suspect that his daughters also went to school there. 

(Gypsie) Thomas Croke later moved to 1735 York Street where according to Google Maps the house is no longer standing. He lived there until he passed away on October 11, 1939. I could not find an obituary for him but Thomas is laid to rest in the Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery. He is in the same cemetery as Horace & Baby Doe Tabor who we talked about in episode 18. Thomas’ son Harold is next to him, he passed away on March 23, 1914 and his wife Euretta is on the other side of him. She passed away on December 30, 1948. All three of them have matching headstones. 

(Drifter) Now let's talk about the man that Thomas Croke sold the house to in 1892, Thomas Patterson. Mr. Patterson was born on November 4, 1839 in Carlow Ireland. His father was James Patterson and his mother was Margaret Mountjoy. The couple had three children including Thomas. His family immigrated to the United States in 1849 when he was 10 years old. They lived in New York for a while before settling in Crawford Indiana. Military records show he enlisted on August 4, 1861 serving only a short time in the Civil War. In 1863 he was married to Katharine Grafton in Wellsburg, West Virginia. Interesting side note, in the Biltmore room of the Patterson Inn is a picture of Katharine hanging on the wall. 

(Gypsie) Thomas later went on to attend college at Indiana Asbury University and then to Wabash College. In 1867 he was admitted to the bar and began practicing law in Crawfordsville. In 1872 Thomas, Katharine and their three children James, Mary and Margaret moved to Denver. He wasn’t there long before he became deputy district attorney. In 1874 he ran as a Democratic nominee for congressional delegate. He was again elected as a Democrat to be a Delegate from the Colorado Territory in 1875-1876 during this time he played a major role in helping Colorado become a state. 

(Drifter) After serving in Congress from 1877 to 1879 he started a law practice with Charles S. Thomas. During this time, Mr. Patterson purchased real estate as well as the Rocky Mountain News. He used his newspaper as well as his political pull to push his Democratic beliefs. The paper was known to have a reputation for integrity, honesty and hard hitting reporting. In 1900 he returned to politics and in 1901 he was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate, a position he held until 1907. In 1913 he sold the newspaper and lived the rest of his life out in the mansion. He passed away on Sunday afternoon on July 23, 1916 while resting in his bed. He was 76 years old. The newspaper reports that he passed away from apoplexy. 

(Gypsie) The only living family member he had at that time was his daughter Margaret. His wife Katharine passed away on July 16, 1902 at the age of 63. She was laid to rest at the Fairmount Cemetery. His only son and oldest child James passed away on March 8, 1892 at the age of 27 in Pasadena California where he was working as an attorney and was a member of the law firm Hartzell and Patterson. The Newspaper says (Drifter) “he was there with his sisters seeking health. The end was caused by a complication of nervous troubles which have taken him from business since last December”. (Gypsie) His body was brought back to Denver with his sisters watching over him. 

(Drifter) His daughter Mary passed away on November 26, 1894. Like her brother, she also was 27 years old at the time of her passing. She died in the family mansion. The newspapers do not say anything about her cause of death. She was laid to rest in the Fairmount Cemetery as well but we are not sure if she is with the family or not.  Thomas and Katharine also had another baby girl, Jane, who passed away as an infant. The family has a large plot in the Fairmount Cemetery and they are all resting next to each other as well as Thomas’ parents and brother. 

(Gypsie) With Margaret being his only living child, she and her husband inherited the mansion. Her husband was Richard Crawford Campbell. He was born on January 2, 1865 in Wheeling Ohio. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1886 after that he moved to Alabama and then to New York. There he got a job working for the New York Sun. After working a few years there he moved to Denver in 1894. On September 4, 1895 Margaret and Richard Campbell were married. The two of them had three children, Thomas Patterson, Richard Crawford Jr. and Katherine. 

(Drifter) The couple lived in the mansion until 1924. From there they purchased a new mansion located at 909 York Street, today that house is part of the botanical gardens adjoining Cheesman Park, of which we will discuss in a future episode. The couple did not enjoy the new house together long, at age 57 or 58 Margaret passed away in 1929. Richard didn’t live long without his wife before he passed away at the age of 64 or 65 in 1930. The two of them were laid to rest in the Fairmount Cemetery. They share a headstone with each other as well as their son Richard who passed away at the age of 18 in 1918. Their son Thomas Patterson Campbell is resting with them, he passed away in 1972. His son passed away as an infant and is resting with the family as well as Thomas’ second wife Miriam Savage Campbell. They have a very tall grey headstone with Campbell on the bottom. 

(Gypsie) After Maragaret and Richard passed away, the Patterson Mansion became headquarters for the Joe Mann School of Orchestra. In 1927 the radio station KFVR moved into the house. They didn’t stay in the location long before the address was changed to 420 East Eleventh Ave and then it was converted into six large apartments in 1930. In 1947 the house was purchased by Dr. Archer Chester Sudan. 

(Drifter) Dr. Sudan got his medical degree at the University of Chicago in 1925. The following year he came to Denver to do some fishing and fell in love with the place. He decided that he wanted to stay in Colorado and found a small town called Kremming. At that time roughly 567 people were living there. He opened up a medical practice and for the next 21 years he served the small community as a family doctor.  From 1946 to 1947 he served as the president of the Colorado Medical Society. It was during this time that he moved to Denver where he purchased the mansion and lived in two of the apartments.

(Gypsie) On January 7, 1948 the American Medical Association presented him with a gold medal and certificate for his exceptional service. Dr. Sudan was surprised he was selected out of the 100,000 other applicants. On receiving the award he said (Drifter) “It will serve a fine purpose if it will encourage young men to become family doctors and give the people all around service.” 

(Gypsie) On July 11, 1951 he was elected the state director of the Grand Junction and Ridge training homes. He held this position until March 1956. He stayed living in the mansion until 1957 when he moved to Boulder and lived out the rest of his life. 

(Drifter) Dr. Sudan was born on August 15, 1891 in Madison South Dakota. When he moved to Colorado he met and married Tullen Florence Shepard some time in 1926. The two of them had one documented child, Archer Chester Sudan Jr. He was born on October 23, 1927. Dr. Sudan’s wife, Tulleen lived to be 47 years old when she passed away on February 5, 1950. (Gypsie) It is uncertain how she passed away or if she was at the mansion when she died, we could not find anything in the newspapers about it. We did find a few stories that talk about her passing. They say that when the Dr. and his wife moved into the mansion they had with them an infant daughter. For unknown reasons the baby passed away. Tulleen could not bear the loss of her child. The night Mrs. Sudan passed, she went into the bathroom, drew herself a warm bath and dropped in cyanogas. Cyanogas is a powerful pesticide, when the poison reaches the water it makes cyanide which will suffocate anyone close by. 

(Drifter) If this is true and Tulleen did pass away at the house that could be why several people hear a woman crying, see a woman standing in the third floor window, and people even say they hear a baby cry. Stories state that when her baby passed away the couple buried her in the basement, but several excavations have been done down there and they have not been able to recover anything. 

(Gypsie) When the Doctor and his new wife moved out of the house in 1958 his son Archer Jr. moved in and started renting the apartments in the house out and worked as the landlord. He lived in the mansion and managed it until it was sold to Mary Rae and her husband in April of 1973. By this time the mansion was facing demolition, it was old, in need of a lot of repairs, and the costs were too much for a lot of people. Mary got to work getting the house designated as a landmark naming it the Croke-

Patterson-Campbell house. She then got to work converting the apartments into office spaces. 

(Drifter) This is when ghost stories started to emerge. Workers would spend the entire day fixing something only to come back the next day and find everything they did was undone. Tools started to disappear only to reappear in another area they were not even working in. Thinking vandals were breaking in at night they placed a fence around the house but that did nothing to stop what was going on inside. They hired a full time night guard only to have him walk off after one night. They then placed guard dogs inside of the house. The next morning they came back to find one of the dogs had jumped out of the window and was lying dead on the porch. The next day they found the other dog in the basement laying in the corner in a catatonic state. 

(Gypsie) Work continued on the mansion and eventually they were able to open the office spaces. But the hauntings continued. Typewriters would start clicking away by themselves, even the printer would turn on and print off documents that were not even on the computers. The light bulbs would not last long before they burnt out and needed to be replaced, and it was difficult to run a business in a mansion where the phone lines were unexpectedly always tied up. Some people believe the ghost haunting the office equipment is Senator Patterson. Thinking that maybe he is upset, that the news is not reporting the facts accurately and he wants to get the truth out. 

(Drifter) Several people have gone to the house and held seances. Claims were made they were able to talk to several spirits, one belonging to a house maid, and another to a young man. It seemed that throughout the entire seance the spirits kept trying to direct them to the basement. When they asked if a human was buried down there, they got the response of yes. The group then went to the basement to see if they could discover anything. When they saw some of the brick did not match the rest they removed them. They were able to discover a walled off room with a freshly poured floor. After exploring the area it was determined that nothing was inside. 

(Gypsie) One news reporter went to investigate the mansion with a group of ghost hunters. One of them said she saw a woman walk up the stairs. She claimed their equipment would stop working for no reason and then it would suddenly turn back on. She then said when they went back to the studio to work on editing half of it was gone. When they returned the next day the work was back but it was all in red and unusable. 

(Drifter) Sometime in 2010, Brian Higgins purchased the house and began a major renovation. He turned the mansion into what it is today, a fine bed and breakfast. During the renovation he also worked on producing a movie called The Castle Project.  The film was released in 2013 and if you are interested in watching it we were able to rent it for free on Amazon. It's about an hour and a half long and he goes into some interesting theories as to why the house may be haunted. That same year Brian was able to open for guests to stay at the mansion. 

(Gypsie) When we talked to the current owner of the mansion he told us that when he purchased the building he was told that several of the past owners were unable to make the business survive and that Mr. Croke only stayed in the house for 6 months before he left. The current owner not believing it to be true was shocked to find that within almost 6 months of him owning it the world was struck by COVID-19 and all the shutdowns. We are happy to say that he made it through everything and things seem to be going well for him.

(Drifter) We hope the Patterson Mansion will continue to stand and serve the community of Denver as well as showcase its beauty. Who knows, maybe now that we have done some research of our own we will go spend a night in the hotel and see for ourselves if it is haunted or not. (Gypsie) I just got a new spirit box for christmas that I have not been able to test it out and would love to take it there one day. I refuse to use it at my own house because I don’t want to know if there is a ghost in here! 

(Drifter) Alrighty folks, I think that wraps up our adventure to Denvers Haunted Patterson Inn. Are you honoring us with one of your famous Gypsie Dad Jokes?

(Drifter) Dad Joke…………..

(Gypsie) I once stayed in a haunted house that played 70’s music

(Gypsie) At first I was afraid I was petrified. 

(Gypsie) What will you never find in a haunted house

(Gypsie) A living room 

(Drifter) Alright then. Thank you all so very much for joining us and supporting the Rebel At Large adventure podcast. As alway’s, if we're active at all, we’re most active on the Instagram (Gypsie) @rebelatlarge. You can find links to our email, patreon, merch store in the show notes and on any of our social deals.

 (Drifter) We’ll talk to ya here in a couple of weeks, (Gypsie) Safe Travels, (Drifter) We’ll see ya down the road.

Begin 30 seconds of the same uplifting Rock/Western tune as the introduction.