Thirty-two years ago, Jim Wiseman took a drive from his house in Wash Park, up into Denver’s San Rafael neighborhood, northeast of downtown. Now he has a showplace Victorian there (his daughter, Keller Williams agent Lindsey Wiseman calls it “the ultimate Christmas house”)…close to two other period Victorians that are on the market now from $400,000, and some spectacular new row homes, as well.

Keller Williams agent Lindsey Wiseman (left) joins her father, San Rafael restoration pioneer Jim Wiseman, and Coldwell Banker agent Soledad Tobar, in front of Wiseman’s historic home at 22nd and Emerson Street.

“It was pretty marginal back then,” says Wiseman, who went on to help establish national historical recognition for San Rafael, and to fix up no less than 80 homes in the four or five blocks surrounding his address at 22nd and Emerson.

There was nothing in the way of historic protection when Wiseman laid eyes on the marvelous home at 2096 Emerson. The house, with one of the city’s most magnificent Victorian facades, had been occupied during the 1970s by Russell Means’ militant American Indian Movement, and had later been slated for a mandated city tear-down. “The doors were swinging in the wind,” Wiseman recalls. “I moved in with a kerosene heater.” Within a day Wiseman had installed 60 new panes of glass into broken windows. Two houses next door had already been lost to the bulldozer, and Wiseman estimates that 25% of San Rafael’s total housing stock was sitting vacant.
“When you looked at downtown from here, you knew (that the neighborhood) had all kinds of potential,” Wiseman added. “When it comes to period stock, this and City Park West (the neighborhood to the east of San Rafael bordering City Park) are probably the nicest in the city.”
“Nobody has heard of San Rafael, and the homes are so spectacular,” adds Coldwell Banker agent Soledad Tobar, who coordinated a holiday tour of the area, with Lindsey Wiseman and other agents. Right up the street from Wiseman’s home, Tobar has a 1,900 foot Victorian listed at 2226 Emerson, totally remodeled with new kitchen, new master suite with luxury bath and dressing-area style walk-in closet, second bedroom suite, plus third bedroom down. It’s historic formal rooms have been tastefully updated, and it’s priced at $499,000.
There are also new homes in the neighborhood by Wiseman and other builders, some of them showcasing remarkable views of downtown’s office towers a mile southwest. “It’s four or five blocks to Uptown’s Restaurant Row,” Wiseman said, adding that unlike some other areas of the city with historic homes, San Rafael has no mixed commercial use areas and no one-way streets.
For more information call Soledad Tobar at 303-887-5120.

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