The Brown Palace Hotel (Denver, Colorado)

 hotel, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, love hotel / motel, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

321 17th Street
Denver, CO 80202
(303) 297-3111
www.brownpalace.com

Taken from the Historic Traveler

Wealthy entrepreneur Henry Cordes Brown started work on his namesake Denver hotel in 1888. When it opened August 12, 1892, the result was a tall (for the time) and striking triangular building sitting at the intersections of Broadway, Tremont and 17th Streets. Today, the Brown Palace management boasts the hotel has been open for business every minute of every day since then.

As well as being in business continuously for almost 103 years, the nine-story Brown Palace’s place in history is secured by several unique architectural features, distinguished guests and its experiences over a rollicking century. Host to a diverse group of upscale travelers such President Dwight D. Eisenhower, retail magnate J.C.

Penney and the 1960s rock group The Beatles, it was long famous for being the first hotel to boast an indoor atrium lobby (dating from its 1892 opening), for temporarily holding the record for the amount of onyx covering its public areas (12,400 surface feet) and, when electric lighting was in its infancy, for generating its own electrical power from “a magnificent” engine room. Today, as well as being historically significant for the grand late-19th-century design of its public areas, it’s also famous for still securing all its own water needs from 720-foot-deep Artesian wells.

Given the amount of mild mayhem committed in the Brown Palace, however, its survival is perhaps even more remarkable. Its management, for instance, is quick to point out it no longer accepts animals as guests. But being the grand dame of hotels in Denver, capital to Colorado’s cattlemen, it has actually endured having champion bulls displayed in its lobby and, as late as 1982, having 10 prize Black Angus beeves auctioned off there (raising $1.7 million for the owners and charity). Animal performers — famous cats, dogs and simians — have been guests, and movie personality Zsa Zsa Gabor once lost her cat in the Brown Palace’s heating system.

People have been equally hard on the hotel. During Prohibition, Federal agents raided a Spanish-American War veterans’ reunion at the Brown Palace, confiscated their liquor and for a year padlocked the suite they had been using. Troops were quartered in the Brown Palace during World War II: Room 321 was converted to an officers club, and men of the army’s 10th Mountain Division — without orders — practiced rappelling from the hotel’s balconies. During their 1964 stay, The Beatles were besieged at the Brown Palace by young girl fans — many of whom tried to apply for housekeeping jobs just to get near “the Fab Four.” But management is particularly proud of one incident: during a stay at the Brown Palace, President Eisenhower practiced his golf swing in his suite and drove a ball into one room’s fireplace mantel. The dent and damage to the mantel have never been repaired and are, in fact, preserved to this day as a memento of the Presidential stay.

Of particular interest to Historic Traveler readers is one of the Brown Palace’s three restaurants — the Palace Arms. Recently awarded a four-star rating by the Mobil Travel Guide for its cuisine, it also features displays of museum-quality antiques. In a room decorated with 22 replica flags — including battle flags from the American Revolution and “flags prominent in the exploration of the American continent” — it maintains items traced back to 1670; among them a pair of dueling pistols authenticated as being owned by Emperor Napoleon I and an ornate silver centerpiece commissioned by the British Royal Family.