Through their windows...

OKay so i took these photos a while ago and JUST NOW found the camera!!! MUAHAHAHA! Success! Anyway. When I asked the curator of the McAllister House for some reading material about the home and the McAllister family, I have found one thing extremely fascinating about the McAllisters and their windows....THEY WERE MADE OF GLASS!!! hahahahaha....okay in all seriousness. Yes they were made of glass, which gives evidence to Major McAllister's love of fine, building materials. However, what I mean to allude to is the view outside of the McAllister's windows.

When Major McAllister and his wife arrived in Colorado, it was a savage country; far removed from the opulent society they had left in Philadelphia. From readings I have sifted through as well as contemporary photographs, Fountain Colony (as Colorado Springs was known then) was desolate. Beyond the untamed beauty of the peaks, there was little of the landscape to recommend itself. All those beautiful trees that line streets and shelter historic homes were not there. Have any of you ever been east towards Falcon or Peyton? Its all just flat prairie out here in the boonies...and so was the view that met Major and Mrs. McAllister everyday from their pane-glass windows.

In the development of Fountain Colony, General Palmer and Major McAllister decided to bring trees out to this desert area from the Ohio River Valley. They hope to make the area more appealing to prospective settlers. In fact, they brought out nearly 3,000 trees!!

So...When the McAllisters looked out their windows they would see vast expanses of prairie grasses...perhaps the occasional construction of neighborhood homes. I was intrigued and decided to go about the house and compare what the McAllisters would have seen in 1873 to the view 137 years later.

There were TREES!! Mature, adult trees that surround the small cottage. An alien sight to the saplings the McAllisters much have been used to. There are other buildings, both new and old construction, also surrounding the family home. Across the street there was a cold, concrete building. CONCRETE. How odd to see concrete and streetlights from behind a lace-veiled window, in a room trapped in time. From the McAllister's bedroom I could see the bank in the lot behind the cottage. I could see the dumpster where the bank and other businesses so casually throw their trash. Where would the McAllister's place their trash? First and foremost, there wouldn't be the much to throw out. Settler's used all they could...waste was intolerable. Beyond my musings I see a homeless individual clawing his way through the dumpster. So hunger has followed the McAllisters from the nineteenth century into the twenty-first.