|
|
Reader Service
Free Travel Info |
|
Colorado Calendar
|
|
About our Advertisers
|
|
|||||
|
Feature Article Including Web Exclusive Photos
Still in fashion after all these years by Eric Peterson Thick with history, these Colorado hotels, each older than a century, have scads of stories to tell — romances, comedies, tragedies and tall tales.The Brown Palace, Denver 
Fun Fact: President Dwight Eisenhower rented the Brown Palace Club as his campaign headquarters in the early 1950s. Preserved for posterity in the suite that now bears his name is a dent in the mantel inflicted by an ill-advised golf swing.Henry Brown arrived in Denver in 1860, when the city was little more than a tent camp. The carpenter (and budding real estate tycoon) foresaw a boom in the local real estate market and bought several plots of land. He used one, a grassy triangle at the corner of Broadway and Tremont Street, to graze his cow. By the mid-1880s, he had grander designs for it than pasture: He wanted to build the fledgling metropolis' preeminent hotel, the Brown Palace. Brown accomplished that feat by putting $2 million into a blueprint by Colorado State Capitol architect Frank Edbrooke. Beginning in 1888, an Italian Renaissance tower started its nine-floor, four-year ascent toward completion, with a façade of Colorado granite and Arizona sandstone. No detail was spared: The contractors imported sea sand so the mortar would be wafer thin; an unprecedented 12,400 surface feet of onyx was installed inside; the crowning touch was an ornate stained glass dome. When the hotel opened in 1892, room rates were in the exorbitant range of $3 to $5 a night. The Brown has been open for business nonstop since, accommodating everyone from royalty and presidents to movie actors and rock stars. The hotel remains the spitting image of its turn-of-the-20th-century self, when it was the tallest building in all of Denver. The original artesian wells, 720 feet below street level, still supply the water. The place oozes with luxury and, as Henry Brown envisioned, it remains Denver's preeminent hotel. The Cliff House, Manitou Springs Fun Fact: The Cliff House's 17 celebrity suites are named after notable guests from the hotel's late 19th and early 20th century heyday, including P.T. Barnum, "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Clark Gable-the last of whom now has a dazzling velvet and faux-leopard skin-clad gem of a room named after him on the fifth floor. In 1873, Manitou Springs entrepreneurs established a boarding house for miners, trappers and traders on the stagecoach route to Leadville. Three years later, Edward Nichols bought the basic lodging, soon to be dubbed the Cliff House, and expanded it to more than 200 rooms. By 1880, Manitou Springs' tourism economy overtook mining and trapping, thanks in no small part to the area's crystalline natural springs, which were then believed to have restorative powers. Replacing ragtag frontiersmen and fortune-seekers, Eastern sophisticates took a fancy to the place. Apparently, there remained an unsavory element: A weathered guest book now on display in the lobby reads, "All guests without baggage must pay in advance." Black-and-white photos from the 1870s reveal a hillside dominated by the Cliff House, skirted by a gazebo and a few tents. The development of what is now one of the largest national historic districts in the country followed, but aside from the prominent boulder that is now integrated into the arcade on Ruxton Creek, modern Manitou Springs was nonexistent during the Cliff House's first years. The Nichols family sold the property in 1948. It served as a hotel, with a popular bar named the Cave, through the 1960s when it became an apartment house. Current owner James Morley bought the property in 1981, only to see it go up in flames a year later, thanks to a careless smoker. The wounded hotel sat unused for 16 years, but received a new lease on life when Morley sunk $10 million into an award-winning restoration that saw the hotel reopen in 1999. This time around, smoking is not permitted. The Strater Hotel, Durango 
Fun Fact: During the 1920s, famed Western author Louis L'Amour's home away from home was room 222, smack-dab above the honky-tonk ramblings emanating from the Strater's Diamond Belle Saloon. He said the noise was not a distraction, but an inspiration. In 1887, a pharmacist named Henry Strater envisioned a bright future for the then-mining camp of Durango, and planned a grand hotel. Never mind the fact that the 20-year-old Strater had no money or hotel experience. He was gutsy and stubborn, and borrowed $70,000 to build a hotel out of 376,000 native red bricks and hand-carved sandstone cornices and sills. After its grand opening in 1888, the Strater quickly became Durango's cornerstone. Many year-round residents would board up their houses for the winter and live in the hotel until spring. But it wasn't exactly a symbol of modernity. The Strater lacked running water, instead housing a unique three-story privy. Rooms went for $1 to $2.50 a night. It was the 20th century that saw the hotel emerge as one of the best Victorian hotels in the West. Henry Strater and his partners went belly-up in 1895, and the bank repossessed the hotel. New owners acted as stewards until 1926, when a group headed by Earl Barker, Sr. bought the property and catalyzed its ascent to luxury. The Barker group installed private bathrooms, air conditioning and other modern conveniences. In 1963, second-generation owner Earl, Jr. and his wife, Jentra, began collecting American Victorian-era walnut furnishings for use in the hotel. Today, the Strater boasts the largest such collection in the country and is operated by Rod Barker, Earl, Jr.'s son. New Sheridan Hotel, Telluride Fun Fact: Thanks to inventor Nikola Tesla, Telluride was the first locale in the world with alternating current (AC) power, meaning that the New Sheridan was lit before hotels in Paris (the so-called "City of Lights"). The New Sheridan Hotel opened in 1895 on the lot adjacent to the old Sheridan Hotel, which had burned to the ground a year earlier. Initially ser-ving the area's booming mining industry, the New Sheridan gained fame when three-time presidential candidate (and three-time loser) William Jennings Bryan delivered his "Cross of Gold" speech out front on July 4, 1904. That same year, a mudslide careened into town, filling the lobby with eight feet of sludge. The resilient hotel survived, although a difficult period lay ahead. Telluride's mineral-based economy faltered after World War I, as did the New Sheridan. The hotel was condemned several times, and ownership changes were numerous. (On more than one occasion gamblers even won and lost the New Sheridan's deed during poker games.) The place still had coal-fueled radiators into the 1970s, all the while deteriorating from its turn-of-the-century heyday. Salvation came in 1972 when the Telluride Ski Resort was born-miners gave way to bohemians, and the town's destiny, which at one point was underground, veered skyward. In 1994, the Leucadia Corp. bought the property and renovated it for the first time in its 99-year history, crafting a vision of what the hotel might have been like in its Victorian prime-with the addition of high-speed Internet access and other modern innovations. The back bar and one wooden wall in the lobby are the only original features that remain today. The Delaware Hotel, Leadville 
Fun Fact: Wild West legends were partial to the Delaware in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: "Doc" Holliday and the Earp brothers enjoyed extended stays; Butch Cassidy and the James Gang also laid low here. The Delaware Hotel opened in 1886 at the height of Colorado's silver mania. Then 30,000 residents strong (about 10 times the current population), Leadville was a wild and wooly place, with 200 saloons and even more bordellos. The Callaway brothers built the three-story Delaware for $60,000, naming it after their home state. The first guests were miners and businessmen, but after the silver panic of 1893, the hotel entered a 90-year period of decline. In the early 1900s, the tragic symbol of Leadville's boom and bust, Baby Doe Tabor, would amble into the lobby for heat, her frigid feet sheathed in gunnysacks. After her scandalous marriage to silver baron Horace Tabor and their ensuing financial ruin, Baby Doe spent her final years in a shanty at the nearby Matchless Mine, where her then-deceased husband had made much of his fortune. The Delaware's condition hit bottom in 1983, when the area's last big mine scaled back operations. A new landlord evicted the Delaware's residents and the threat of the wrecking ball loomed large. New ownership saved the place from demolition, however, and today the Delaware boasts lovingly restored interiors, antique furnishings, and even a few resident ghosts. Eric Peterson is a freelance writer living in Denver; website www.kindguides.com. What is a historic hotel? The National Trust for Historic Preservation, through its Historic Hotels of America program, defines a historic hotel as one that is at least 50 years old, listed or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, or recognized locally as having historic significance. The organization has identified more than 200 such hotels across America. Colorado contains eight: Hotel Jerome, Aspen; Hotel Boulderado, Boulder; The Brown Palace Hotel, Denver; The Oxford Hotel, Denver; Strater Hotel, Durango; The Cliff House at Pikes Peak, Manitou Springs; The Redstone Inn, Redstone; and New Sheridan Hotel, Telluride. To order a complete directory, call 800-678-8946 or visit www.historichotels.org.
|
Copyright © 2004 AAA Colorado. All Rights Reserved. Privacy