After 40+ years as a signature holiday event in Denver, the L’Esprit de Noël Home Tour goes virtual again in 2021. The Central City Opera Guild’s only fundraiser of the year, L’Esprit has a long history of featuring Denver’s most interesting neighborhoods through a two-day walking tour of grand and historical homes decorated by the area’s most prolific florists and designers.
For its 45th year, the “Le Petit” tour moves online in the form of a FREE video walk-through of the incredible McCourt Mansion and features performances by Central City Opera artists. The video will be available to the general public from November 19 through December 31.
Viewers are asked for a donation to support Central City Opera through this difficult time in the performing arts.
The Home: Built for Peter McCourt in 1888 and encompasses 9,981 finished square feet of space. Peter McCourt was the older brother of Denver’s famed Baby Doe Tabor who was born Elizabeth McCourt. The McCourt Mansion was one of the first homes in Denver on city gas mains for lighting.
There ares 350 year old quarter-sawn oak bookshelves as well as wood paneling all saved from a home in England. Plaster crown molding, stained glass windows and beaded paneling have all survived the 100+ years since the mansion was built.
Peter McCourt eventually purchased the Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver, and for the rest of his life was a predominant figure in Denver theater. After Horace Tabor lost everything in the silver crash of 1893, he and Baby Doe Tabor lived for two years with Peter McCourt at the McCourt Mansion.
This means that the McCourt Mansion, is the last surviving Historic Home of Denver in which the Tabors lived. Legend says that the ghost of Horace Tabor wanders the halls of the McCourt Mansion with sightings of him in tails and a top hat. Supposedly, the ghost once even asked a young child if he “knew where Peter was?”.
Peter McCourt died in 1929. The McCourt Mansion then became the Barnes Business School. Later the McCourt Mansion served as a group home for the mentally handicapped. Today, the McCourt Mansion serves as the office of Zupkus & Angell, P.C., a Denver law firm.
For more information about this year’s tour and to view images of tours past, click on this link.