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Another Ed Sadowski creation
ED SADOWSKI
HOTELS
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Downtown
Denver
HOTELS
Art Hotel
Brown Palace Hotel
The Crawford
Hotel Teatro
Windsor Hotel
Art Hotel ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
12th & Broadway
The 165-room ART Hotel, located in Denver’s museum district, is a “modern architectural gem bursting with unique multisensory installations,” according to Condé Nast. The Art Hotel boasts “the highest caliber of art in any U.S. hotel,” one of the few hotels in the world that can be described as doubling as an art museum.
Contemporary paintings, sculptures and murals (complete with a printed guide) grace two galleries, as well as hallways and guest rooms of the hotel, the works selected as well as commissioned by an in-house curator, formerly of the Denver Art Museum.
The hotel’s porte-cochère is a grand entrance featuring a striking electronic canopy of 22,000 computer-programmed patterns of shimmering, undulating LED lights by the world’s premiere light artist, Leo Villareal. The hotel’s inclusion on “best” and “coolest” reviews and lists of accolades and awards is impressive.
The Brown Palace Hotel ///////////////////////////////////
17th and Tremont and Broadway
The Brown Palace is distinguished among the world’s hotels with a number of superlatives. The Brown was the world’s first hotel with an atrium lobby. When built in 1892, the amount of semiprecious onyx used for the lobby interior walls was the most ever for a building until that time. The Brown was said to be America’s second fire-proof hotel (no wood was used for the floors and walls).
The Brown is recognized as having one of the great tea rooms in America, with its more than century-old tradition of proper British-style high teas. The Brown’s baked goods are mostly made in a nearly unique, 1940s carousel oven, one of only three known to be in existence in the world. The hotel has pioneered urban beekeeping with its rooftop bee hives.
Its celebrity who’s who list of past visitors include superstar entertainers, world leaders and royalty. Almost every US president since 1905 has stayed at the hotel. Distinctive accommodations include Victorian-themed suites, presidential suites and the Beatles Suite (with a custom).
Each January sees a most peculiar ritual, where the National Western’s Grand Champion steer walks a red carpet through the elegant lobby during afternoon tea. Denver’s second-oldest hotel is said to have resident ghosts, most often sighted in the Club Room.
The Crawford ///////////////////////////////////////////////
Union Station, 17th & Wynkoop
Superlatives: top-ten, coolest model for boutique hotels, breaking the urban mold. Bustling, unique lobby with exceptional energy.
The centerpiece of the renovated Union Station is the The Crawford, which opened up in 2014 and opened eyes to a hotel experience seldom seen. As Forbes magazine put it, The Crawford "is not just a hotel in a train station, it is a train station as hotel, a triumph of architecture and design...simply the coolest new hotel I have visited in a long time." The publication listed The Crawford in its top ten hotels in the world for the year.
Uniquely, the Station's waiting area is the Hotel's lobby, and the concept works magnificently in unexpected ways. The hall as lobby and eating and drinking and relaxing place to hang out with its comfortable chairs and couches and tables and workstations with free wifi is a vibrant public space, with a rare ambience and energy, a magnet for locals and tourists. Arched entryways are next to bars, restaurants, coffee shops and retail shops. Countless works of art and 112 guest rooms with clever design themes rise above both sides of the great hall, crowned with a 65-foot atrium ceiling.
Hotel Teatro ////////////////////////////////////////////////////
14th and Arapahoe Streets
The West’s first operating electric streetcar was constructed at this site in 1885. The exquisite Hotel Teatro is located in the restored Tramway Building, and has been distinguished by Expedia as one of the “Top 10 Hotels in the World.”
At that time Colorado Seminary was located here (which became the University of Denver the following year). The tramway was the brainchild of Sydney Short, vice president and chairman of the physics department at Colorado Seminary, and was operated by the Denver Electric and Cable Railway Company. A circular track trolley was built and expanded with a line running up Colfax Ave. to Pennsylvania St., across to 15th St., then back down to Center, a former downtown street.
This site of Hotel Teatro was the first location of the Evans Mansion, home of John Evans, Colorado’s second territorial governor. In 1911 the Denver Tramway Building was constructed here. After World War II, when streetcars were eliminated in Denver, the building was purchased by the University of Colorado at Denver. CU Denver moved from this location in the late 1980s to the Auraria campus.
Windsor Hotel /////////////////////////////////////////////////
nw corner 18th & Larimer
GONE INTO HISTORY
“The largest and most complete hotel between Chicago and San Francisco” was how the Windsor Hotel was touted when it opened in 1880.
The five-story Windsor was faced with lava stone with additions of sandstone and ironwork and modeled after England’s Windsor Castle and the Windsor Hotel in Montreal. The hotel was financed by an English syndicate, and flew the Stars and Stripes as well as the Union Jack and Windsor castle flags from its turrets.
Uncommon luxuries included hot and cold water and a spa with tile and marble, with Turkish, Russian and Roman baths fed by artesian wells. The hotel had its own farm with imported cows, and even its own hunters, who brought in wild game. The wine cellar was the best, stocked by bartender Harry Tammen, co-founder of The Denver Post.
The hotel introduced the country’s first floating grand ballroom, made of white ash with black walnut, and suspended at each end by cables.
Guests of the Windsor included three presidents, Buffalo Bill Cody, Calamity Jane, Bat Masterson and Jack Kerouac. Silver king Horace Tabor housed his mistress Baby Doe there, then after losing his fortune and losing his mansion, he and wife Baby Doe lived there, where Tabor died.
Decades later the hotel became run-down and by the 1930s, the Windsor was labeled “the only flophouse in the world with a marble fireplace in every room.” Despite a restoration in the 1940s, the hotel eventually became run-down again. More restoration plans fell through and Denver’s first luxury hotel was demolished in 1960 to become a parking lot.
