By Carolyn Coleman White
For nearly 30 years, the decaying building at 134 West 6th Street in Leadville, Colorado was a party place, its windows kicked out and graffiti sprayed on the walls. Neighborhood teens used to gather there, leaving beer cans, cigarette butts and other paraphernalia scattered on the once-glossy hardwood floors. During the 1950s and 60s, before it was abandoned, it was a boarding facility, with six apartments (outlines of the numbers can still be seen on certain doors) and two shared bathrooms, one upstairs and another down. “I made a baby in the bedroom right there,” claimed a frail, stooped great-grandmother named Lydia, who now lives across the street, as she pointed toward an upper left window. “My husband had a job at the Climax mine after we moved here from New Mexico. We liked the house, but when the baby came our rented space was just too small.”