Milestones Icon: Hotel Boulderado

The  Hotel Boulderado is the one of the oldest businesses in Boulder and celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2009.

The hotel opened on New Year’s Day in 1909 at 2115 13th St. Since then, it has served thousands of guests from all over the world including Helen Keller, Douglas Fairbanks, Ethel Barrymore and Louis Armstrong.

The idea for the hotel came in 1905 when city council members felt that Boulder, with a population of 8,000, was not growing fast enough. They issued stock at $100 a share to raise the funds to create what they called “a first-class hotel.”

The title of the Boulderado is a cross between “Boulder” and “Colorado”- named so guests wouldn’t forget where they had stayed.

All bedrooms in the original luxury hotel were fitted with light fixtures that ran on both natural gas and electricity, and men were constantly stoking a coal furnace to provide hot water and to keep the hotel evenly heated. Telephones were installed in most of the 75 rooms.

The hotel was built in the Italian Renaissance style with Spanish Revival features, and includes much of its original architecture. The mosaic floor in the entryway, lobby and dining room is original, as is the elevator in the lobby, which requires a staff member to manually operate it.

The cantilevered cherry wood staircase is original and extends from the basement all the way to the fifth floor. The stained-glass ceiling was remade in 1977 to look like the original, which had been damaged. In 2004, it went through a $65,000 renovation.

The Boulderado has been updated in other ways over the years to accommodate the times and now includes such features as wireless access and a business center. Its owners have also committed to being green – they recycle, reuse and donate as many things as possible and cut down on energy use.

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