CITY PARK WEST NEIGHBORHOOD

Isabella and Gilmore Bartholomew purchased this brick house in City Park West in 1942. The home remained in the Bartholomew family for the next fifty years.

Gilmore Bartholomew was born in 1904 in Louisiana and grew up in Memphis. The 1930 census shows him working as a porter for the railroad. Isabella was born in Tennessee in 1906, and she and Gilmore were married in 1936. By 1940, the couple had moved to Denver where Gilmore worked as a porter for the steam railroad. The 1940 census shows the Bartholomews as lodgers with the Otis Taylor family just a few blocks away on Humboldt Street. Isabella, a graduate of Royal Circle Hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas, worked as a nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Gilmore died in 1955, and ownership of the home passed to Isabella.

In 1956, Isabella Bartholomew organized the Denver Chapter of Jack and Jill. The organization was founded in 1938 in Philadelphia and today, according to its website, boasts 252 chapters nationwide representing more than 40,000 family members. The mission of the organization is to nurture future African-American leaders by strengthening children through leadership development, volunteer service, philanthropic giving and civic duty. The Denver chapter is active today and continues the mission. Isabella continued to live in the home until her death in 1992.