The Hotel Boulderado is located at 13th and Spruce St. in downtown Boulder, Colorado. It opened on New Year's Day 1909. The original 1908 Otis Elevator is still in operation.[2]
The hotel was designed by local architects William Redding, Floyd Redding, and James Cowie, all of whom were members of the architectural firm Redding & Sons.[3]
The Hotel Boulderado houses three restaurants. Located off of the main lobby are Spruce Farm and Fish, a fine-dining restaurant, and the Corner Bar, a more casual eatery. The basement contains a speakeasy-style bar, License No. 1, which recently replaced Catacombs. All three restaurants share a kitchen.[5]
In 1905, Boulder was home to 8,000 residents, the University of Colorado, one of the Chautauqua cultural and educational resorts, and twenty-six automobiles. Residents called the city the "Athens of the West." As a new-forged railroad hub, the city did have some hotels to accommodate visitors, but in December 1905, the city council launched the "hotel proposition," furthered by the Boulder newspaper, the Daily Camera. Committees from Boulder's Commercial Association raised funds in the form of $100 subscriptions, and the Boulder Hotel Company was formed, which owned the hotel until 1939.[8]
The hotel was opened with a Gala Ball on New Year's Eve of 1908. The first guests checked in on New Years Day, 1909. The first guest register is still on display in the main lobby, and the modern hotel still commemorates their opening every year with a New Year's Eve Gala Ball,[9] voted the #1 Place to Celebrate New Year's Eve by Downtown Boulder readers.[10]
Architecture
The board of directors for Boulder's Hotel Company tasked local architecture firms to design two concepts per firm.[11] Local architects William Redding, Floyd Redding, and James Cowie of Redding & Sons design was approved by the board of directors in 1906.[11] The architects were inspired by Italian Renaissance and Spanish Colonial Revival-style architecture.
One of the most notable features in the Hotel Boulderado is the stained-glass ceiling of the interior lobby. The ceiling was designed to resemble that of San Francisco’s renowned Palace Hotel (Palace Hotel's stained-glass ceiling would be destroyed during the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906).
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