The Boulder Day Nursery Association was organized in 1917 by the Women’s Club of Boulder Civic Committee in response to the needs of Boulder’s single and working women. In April of 1917, the US declared war on Germany and entered World War I. During that summer and fall men from Boulder County started leaving for Europe and many women started working to support the war effort or to replace income from husbands that were overseas or killed in action. The women of the Civic Club took turns volunteering to supervise children in their homes but they quickly realized that there was a huge demand for the service. At that time, there was really no such thing as childcare in Colorado because women with children were married and married women stayed at home to care for their children, so these volunteers were a working parent’s only option. By the spring of 1918, the demand for the service outstripped the volunteer’s ability to provide care and the Boulder Day Nursery Association was incorporated as Boulder’s first childcare agency. The Association was made up of fifteen members from the Woman’s Club Civic Committee, as well as additional representatives from most of Boulder’s churches and Fraternal Orders.

During that spring, 26 men and women contributed $10 each to cover the cost of renting a building and paying for utilities and food in a permanent location at 1321 Walnut Street as well as hiring a matron to supervise the children and volunteer staff. The rent was $25 per month and the matron’s monthly salary was $30. Fees for care were ten cents per day if you were a regular, and ten cents per hour if you just needed to drop your child off for a couple of hours while you did some shopping downtown or attended social functions. The Civic Committee further funded the Association by conducting dances at Sternberg Hall and Temple Hall, both located on the 1400 block of Pearl StreetLater, to provide for more playground space, the nursery moved to 1605 Walnut. Funding was donated by Boulder’s McKenna family to provide for swings, slides and merry-go-rounds. During the next few years attendance at the Day Nursery grew and with this increase came additional expenses and it looked as though the nursery would have to close the facility for lack of funds, but concerned citizens and local organizations came to the rescue. In-kind goods and services came from many individuals and groups. Milk bottles were placed in the County Clerks office, movie theatre lobbies, the Telephone Company building and the Marshall and Vaniman cafeterias. Receipts from the bottles, as well as generous donations from groups like the Lions and area churches paid for the Nursery’s expenses. During 1922, in addition to the overwhelming grass-roots support, Boulder Day Nursery began to receive support from the Community Chest (predecessor to the United Fund and Boulder County United Way), as well as from the city and county of Boulder.

By 1929 the Association recognized that we needed a larger building and more playground space. In 1911, Hannah Barker presented a plot of land (formerly used as a livery stable since Boulder’s incorporation as a city) between 15th and 16th and Spruce and Pearl Streets to the city for use as a park. On May 21st, at the request of the Association and the Lions Club, the Boulder City Council voted to lease 50 feet of the northeast corner of the park to the Association.

Architect glen Huntington drew the plans for the new building, and ground was broken the following month. The Association, the Lions Club of Boulder and William and John McKenna provided the funds for construction. The groundbreaking ceremony was on Thanksgiving Day in 1929 and on January 5, 1930, the Lions Club sponsored a cornerstone ceremony. Louis Herman (Chair of the Lions Day Nursery building fund committee) held up the box which was to be placed in the cornerstone and placed the contents in it. Contents of the box included news articles about the Nursery, copies of the speeches given during the ceremony, histories of the Association and the Lions Club and copies of the charters for the Association, the Lions Club, and the city of Boulder.

The building was completed in the Spring of 1930. The final cost of building the new facility was just over $10,000. The first matron of the newly constructed building, Jennie Drennon, lived in a modified apartment on the second floor, which shared space with what was labeled on the original floor plans as the “Boy’s Workroom”. The second floor was later converted to offices but the structure remained essentially unchanged until 1969 when a pre-school addition was built on to the southern end of the building.

In March 1970 then First Lady Pat Nixon toured Boulder Day during a national to ur of early childhood education leaders. At that time the country was involved in the Vietnam War, and the University of Colorado Student Mobilization Committee demonstrated its opposition to the War. Over one hundred anti-war protesters stood peacefully outside the nursery during the First Lady’s visit. Local reporters and members of the White House press corps covering the story asked several of the children for their comments about the First Lady and the protesters. One young boy commented that “The hippies don’t want her here.Despite the protests, Mrs. Nixon had a pleasant day with the children and staff.

During the mid-1970’s, the idealism of providing reduced fee, high quality child care met the reality of the free market when teachers became increasingly hard to recruit and retain due to the low wages the center was able to pay with its relatively low revenue. Through a co-operative effort between teachers and the administration, Boulder Day was the first child care center in Colorado to become unionized. Although the center’s teachers are not currently unionized, we have continued to maintain our efforts at leading the industry in teacher wages, benefits, training and recognition.

In 1989 Boulder Day assumed the ownership and operations of the Infant Center. The Infant Nursery, which then became the Boulder Day Infant Nursery, was the first dedicated infant center in Boulder County. The Boulder Day Infant Nursery building was sold in 1997 and operations were consolidated under one roof at Spruce Street. To this day, the Infant Program remains one of very few options for the low-income parent of an infant child.

In 1992 Boulder Day was the first center in Boulder to be accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Boulder Day Nursery maintains that accreditation to this day.

In November 2001, almost 72 years to the day of the original groundbreaking, Boulder Day Nursery broke ground on a renovation and expansion project that preserved the historic building and added an additional 2,600 square feet of additional classroom and administrative space.

Today, as it was in 1917, we exist primarily to care for children of working parents and families of limited resources. We are the only childcare organization that works with low-income families to the extent that we do. The bottom line is that many families would simply not be able to live and work in Boulder without the affordable childcare provided by Boulder Day Nursery.

Boulder Day exists because of the dedication and generosity of the community at large and the people in it like you. During the cornerstone ceremony of the Spruce Street building in 1930, Lions Club president William Casey stated “The Lions club believes this is the Golden Rule in active life [referring to the building], we believe it will bring returns. We dedicate this institution to the betterment of this community and especially to the children. What would life be without the children? The child is like a flower. Surround it with love and joy and it becomes a beautiful soul and develops into a useful citizen.”