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WS Fenn 1000" OMB AN,"ft 1024001e 11�" United States Department of the interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 7 Page 3 well. There are two examples of domestic architecture (C23-7, C39-10) and one social building (Opera House, C23-1) that imitate the Second Empire style in Central City. While most of the domestic buildings are a simple vernacular type with a rectangular plan and intersecting gable roof, often interesting and popular elements were added. These included Gothic Revival details such as ornamental bargeboards, carved porch details, and steeply pitched roofs, and Greek Revival features such as simple wood columns with capitals and wood window and door pediments. A few of the elite homes were decidedly influenced by the Italianate style. The present appearance of the NHL district differs from that of the historic period in two major respects. First, many structures and buildings have disappeared since 1918. A continuous strip of buildings and mining structures connected the towns during the historic period. Now hundreds of the original residential and industrial structures are gone or in ruins. Many were abandoned or dismantled during the 1920s and 1930s to rid owners of tax liabilities and so owners could use the building material for reconstruction in Denver or elsewhere. Little 1860s architecture of any type remains in Central City; much more is intact in Black Hawk. The other main visual change from the historic appearance of the district is the natural landscape. Reforestation since the cessation of mining activity in the late 1910s and the absence of the pollution, caused especially by the Black Hawk smelters, has partly returned the natural environment to its state before the influx of eager prospectors and entrepreneurs. METHODOLOGY All buildings, structures, sites, and major objects in the three towns that comprise the historic district were surveyed by staff members of the National Park Service, Rocky Mountain Regional Office, Division of Cultural Resources, and four students from the history programs at the University of Colorado at Denver and Metropolitan State College. The primary surveyors were Julie Corona and Rickey Hendricks, assisted by Suzanne Evans and Mary Pat Kisling, all of the Regional Office staff. Suzanne Evans designed an architectural survey form specific to the information needed for a precise and accurate recording of contributing and non-contributing buildings of the NHL district and drew the site map of Central City. Julie Corona designed the form for recording mine sites and structures. Information recorded on the forms was gathered by a field survey of every building, structure, and site in the proposed historic district, by research in the Gilpin County Tax Assessor's Office files, Colorado State Historic Preservation Office files, other primary source references such as newspaper and contemporary