Alpenglow Magazine | Lew's House

LEW'S PLACE
Story by Gretchen Bergen
Photo by Byron Hetzler

Lew McGrath has found interesting things under peoples' houses. “The crawl space is where everybody keeps their pornography,” he laughs.

A retired plumber and lifelong collector, Lew lives in a home overlooking Lake Granby that's part museum, part bachelor pad. Here he displays turn-of-the-century clocks, Winter Park Resort memorabilia, and odds and ends he found while on the job, bought at auction, or salvaged from historic buildings.

Downstairs in Lew's walkout basement, old ski bums can belly up to the same bar they passed out on years ago. When they demolished The Slope — an infamous watering hole at the base of Winter Park Resort — Lew resolved to preserve the bar as an important piece of the ski area's history. A volunteer ski patroller for 35 years, Lew has walls full of posters and black-and-white photographs, all paying tribute to Winter Park's colorful past. There are photos of the-larger-than-life Bob Singley and other local ski legends racing to the finish, aping for the camera, or riding the chair lift in compromising positions.

After a few drinks, Lew's guests can play eight ball on an 1890's pool table from the Granby Pool Hall. “It was given to me by a man who was storing it in pieces in the back of his pickup,” Lew recalls. Once he put the table back together, Lew was pleased to find decorative wood and ivory inlays and other details that make the pool table a valuable collector's item. He even has the original speckled wooden balls.

A born collector, Lew started going to auctions when he was ten years old. He still has his first purchase — a collection of Indian arrowheads — neatly framed and displayed among the rest of his treasures. Lew collects just about anything from the turn of the century. “I like turn of the century stuff because it's made of real things — no plastic. Plastic is so temporary,” Lew says. “I like things to last.”

His only rule is that he doesn't pay much for anything. “If I find a deal on something, I buy it.”

Lew recalls the way he bought his property ten years ago over breakfast at a local diner. He scribbled his offer on a napkin and handed it to the property owner who called Lew the next day to accept.

“And that was the only paper I signed,” Lew says, dismissing the stacks of paperwork required for most real estate transactions. “That's the way life should work.”

For years, Lew lived on his lakefront lot in a tiny shed he calls his sugar shack. Inside the tidy house you'll find all the comforts of home, like a neatly-made bed, wood stove, a working phone line and walls covered with pictures and collectables. Just outside, what looks like an old- fashioned outhouse accommodates a working toilet, thanks to Lew's creative plumbing skills. “I have the only legal flushing outhouse in Grand County.”

After a few years of living in the shack off and on, Lew was finally ready to build. After 25 years of fixing pipes, his goal was to construct a maintenance-free home. Instead of wood, Lew opted for steel and concrete. “The concrete goes clear to the ceiling,” he proudly says. Steel beams cantilever the second-story deck, leaving no pillars to obstruct his view.

Sandwiched between Highway 40 and Lake Granby, the stucco and stone home is quiet, thanks to the thick concrete walls. And it's fireproof, too. “I built this house with noise and fire danger in mind,” Lew says, pointing across the lake at a sweep of brown and orange beetle-kill trees where a fire started this summer.

The railing around the second-story deck is unconventional, but nothing out of the ordinary for someone like Lew. Instead of traditional wood or wrought iron, Lew soldered copper plumbing pipes together to fashion one of the strongest railings you'll ever find. “The building inspector said he'd never seen anything like it,” he says.

During construction, Lew found a home for many of the odds and ends he has collected over the years. Lovely glass doors from 1850 England shutter his bedroom closet. Antique chandeliers and other light fixtures from auctions and crawl spaces light many of the rooms. A urinal and other old plumbing fixtures grace the bathroom. And Lew made sure the downstairs had plenty of space for his antique machines, including an old moving picture show.

The collection includes old maps of the United States dating back to 1895, and a self-winding clock made in 1890 displayed under glass so you can admire the moving gears. Another large clock, this one from the Colorado Reserve Bank in Denver, marks each minute with a satisfying whir of gears.

Lew has a passion for mechanical things. He owns 150 clocks, including a towering grandfather clock dating back to 1770. There's a machine that vends cigarettes for a penny, a coin bank that registers the exact change deposited, and a dentist's table with drawers and cubbies that all lock with one turn of a key. Lew also has a working telephone and intercom system from the early 1900's mounted on a wall in his office where a computer will never replace the manual typewriter sitting at the desk.

A Swiss clock remains one of his favorite crawl-space finds.

“I asked the owner if he wanted it and he said, ‘Take it.’ So I took it home and put it together,” Lew says, demonstrating how the clock plays a tune on the hour. “I think it's from the 1890’s.”

In the kitchen decorated with colorful old tins, Lew cooks meals
on a 1913 stove he converted to gas. Meals are served on the a wood bar from the Tabor Hotel in Leadville.

Beyond the mechanical, Lew's collection also has a softer, decorative side. Wood figures carved by his father line the shelves. “My father was a woodcarver with a sense of humor,” Lew says. Stained glass windows from his grandmother's house and Denver's old Mercy Hospital, where Lew often worked on the plumbing, hang in front of windows in lieu of drapes. Behind the bar, an alter from a church in Hot Sulphur Springs displays glassware and bottles. A glittering Czech chandelier from the old Tabor Theater in Denver, torn down 40 years ago, lights the upstairs bedroom. It's one of life's little ironies, Lew says, that he has acquired things from two different Tabor Hotels, one in Leadville, the other in Denver.

Outside, the house overlooks a peaceful cove where Lew and his girlfriend, Karen Newton, sit on a chair lift swing and watch ospreys diving for fat brown trout in the evenings. When the lake is full, the water comes within 15 feet of the house, right up to a stone wall Lew calls his “Irish wall.”

“I told the guy who built it I didn't want it straight,” he says. “Nothing in this house is normal.”

On the edge of the yard an 1847 ore cart holds petunias. A couple of rusty anchors on the lawn resemble oversized toy jacks. Along the side of the house tall red poppies (also maintenance free) nod in the breeze.

More of Lew's collection resides in the garage, including one of the first snowboards Burton ever made and his 1953 Dodge and 1957 T-bird.

Lew's collection, it seems, is only limited by what people are willing to part with. “Some people throw away stuff,” Lou says with a shrug. “I pick it up.”