Next time you are complaining that your neighborhood covenants are too strict, consider the covenants commonly imposed on Colorado Springs neighborhoods a century ago.
Developers including Colorado Springs founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer and Broadmoor hotel founder Spencer Penrose imposed harsh covenants – or rules that future properties owners agreed to live by.
Palmer didn’t want alcohol sold or consumed in his new town and the prohibition lasted for decades.
Penrose and many other developers imposed more sinister covenants that prevented people of color from buying property in their neighborhoods.
Below is a page of covenants from Penrose’s Count Pourtales Addition that he developed near the Broadmoor in 1926. It was supplied by attorney Lenard Rioth, an expert on covenants. In particular, read paragraph 13.
In 1940, when Lee Dorr was developing his Dorchester Heights subdivision in Ivywild, near the Broadmoor, he wrote the following set of covenants. The covenant in paragraph J on page 2, addresses the race and religion of those banned from Dorchester. And paragraph K addresses alcohol.
Here is a map of Dorchester Heights from the May 1940 filing by Dorr.
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