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Other Restored Historic Hotels
Across the country, the doors to
historic hotels are once again
opening as their rich history
and value are recognized. The National
Trust for Historic Preservation keeps
track of some of these treasures, such as:
Mendocino Hotel & Garden
Suites—Mendocino, Calif.
Originally called The Temperance
House, the Mendocino Hotel, built in
1878, is the town's only remaining hotel
Page 6
•American Profile
from its heyday as a logging boom town.
The yellow clapboard hotel with an
ocean view eventually became run
down until local resident R.O. Peter
son bought it in 1975 and hired
designers, craftsmen, and local artists
to restore its physical structure and
Victorian atmosphere.
The hotel’s original structure—
the lobby, dining room, kitchen, and
upstairs rooms—remains intact.
Newer rooms have been added, yet
When Dan and Mary King
bought the old boarded-up Beaumont Hotel,
part of its rtxif was collapsed, layers of paint hid
exterior brickwork, and shattered glass panes
littered the floors.
Long gone was the grand hotel, built in
1886, which once served as the social center
for Ouray, Colo., and welcomed guests such
as Sarah Bernhardt and Theodore Roosevelt.
Ouray (pronounced Yoo-RAY), a high
country' mining town named after a Ute
Indian chief, was once proud to have the
region’s “flagship hotel."
But more than a century' later, what
remained of that proud establishment was a
white elephant wearing a very worn coat of
pink paint.
Except to the Kings.
“We never looked at it the
way it was, just the way it
could be,” Mary says.
“The minute we walked
into it, there was a sense
of people who had been
here before you."
Now, five years and
some $4 million later, the
glasses tinkle in the main
ballroom and guests mar
vel at the elegance around
them. Once again, the
Beaumont is resplendent
they still provide the Victorian flavor
of the town’s pioneer past.
Hotel Pattee—Perryville, lowa
The Hotel Pattee, built in 1913
with amenities such as telephones in
each room and a basement bowling
alley, underwent several incarnations
until Perryville native Roberta
Green Ahmanson and her husband,
Howard, bought it in 1993. Until the
couple acquired it, so many changes had
in its rotunda encircled by balconies, grand
oak staircase, cathedral glass skylights, and
rich wall coverings.
‘lt was spectacular’
When Roger Henn’s father took his family
to the Beaumont for Sunday dinner. was a spe
cial occasion, Henn recalls.
“My earliest memory of the Beaumont was
about 1921," says Henn, 86, a Ouray native. "I
was 4 years old and we would go to the Beau
mont several times every year after church until
my father died."
Henn, who played on the hotel’s back stairs
as a child, easily remembers the details of
Ouray's finest hotel.
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Proprietors Mary and Dan King.
“It was a fantastic thing," Henn
recalls. “You walked in a big lobby
area and at that time there were
(display) cases around with mining
samples from various mines around
there.”
The grand staircase particularly
captured his attention. “It was a per
fectly marvelous staircase, some
thing that looks like it came out of
the South," he says. ’Overhead was
an open atrium that went up to the
sfo-. When reflections were just
right, you could see in the glass the
reflections of the mountains that
surround Ouray'. It was spectacular.’’
been made and facades added that the
only original piece remaining from 1913
was the “Pattee” inscribed at the top of
the building.
But after a 2 1/2-year renovation, the
hotel reopened, with its canopy, bowling
alley, and lobby—with chandeliers and
Persian mg—restored.
The Windsor—Americus, Ga.
The Windsor, occupying nearly an
entire city block, w'as a five-stony 100-