St. Regis Hotel, Grand Junction, Colorado 359 Colorado Avenue Grand Junction Mesa Colorado 81501 USA https://historicalmarkerproject.com/markers/HM29AF_st-regis-hotel_Grand-Junction-CO.html Historic Marker Project webpage for the St. Regis Hotel The St. Regis Hotel was built in 1892 and has undergone several renovations. It has also housed several tenants, most recently the Feisty Pint restaurant on the ground floor. According to the website of the Historic Marker Project, which utilizes information from the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel was originally known as the Grand Hotel. It was owned by Allie Neff, William Neff, and Anna Scott. Harry Burnett purchased the hotel in 1904 and renamed it the New Grand Hotel and then the St. Regis Hotel. The hotel's Art Deco style stems from a remodel in 1933. The National Register of Historic Places has the following description, dating from 1992, of the hotel's history and architectural attributes: "Situated in the main business district of the city of Grand Junction, the Hotel St. Regis is a three story brick veneer building built in three phases, beginning in 1892. Upon completion of the third phase in 1924 it exhibited a 19th Century Commercial style with some influences from an earlier Italianate style. The building has a U-shaped plan which reflects three major additions to the original two story structure. (See site plan.) Three stories exist along the two street fronts and the west rear wing has two stories. The brick veneer walls are capped on the street sides with a wood and sheet metal cornice forming a parapet above the flat roof. A cupola sits above the northeast corner of the building, and is one of its most distinctive features. The hotel facade is a very simple design with windows evenly spaced and lined up above each other. The pattern of window placement was determined by the various additions to the original structure. The building angles across the corner at Colorado Avenue and Fourth Street to form the main entrance. There are secondary entrances on the east and north sides of the building. The historic exterior of the building has remained intact since its last major remodeling after a fire in 1924. The interior of the hotel has been changed several times since then. The original structure, called the Grand Hotel, completed in 1894, stands on pilings and a brick foundation, with the center of the building supported by concrete piers. The building is of wood frame construction, with bricks and mortar placed between the studs and held in place by nails driven through studs. Brick and mortar was an accepted form of insulation at the time. A pressed metal facing covered the exterior of the building. Part of this metal facing still exists in an interior courtyard formed by the original building and the two story west wing, added in 1906. In 1904, under new ownership, the metal facade on the street sides was removed and a white brick veneer added. Later that year a third story was added to the existing hotel, supported on steel "I" beams (still visible on the west side of the east wing) placed twelve feet apart over the old hotel portion. The lobby once stood on the east side of the first floor just inside the current east entrance. Little remains of this part of the interior of the hotel except for the fireplace and the check-in boxes. The main staircase, reported to be rather elegant at the time, was destroyed in 1990 to provide additional space for a newly remodeled bar. The hotel restaurant was located to the west of lobby. A ladies parlor and the sample rooms used by traveling salesmen were also located off the lobby on the ground floor. These rooms were remodeled in the 1950's to enlarge the bar at that time. A two story west wing was built in 1906, which added rooms upstairs and a larger dining room space, a storeroom, a kitchen and pantry (photo y/4). Simple wooden stair railings lead to the upper floors. The twenty new guest rooms upstairs on the third floor were equipped with lavatories; four of those had connecting baths. These changes gave the building its present U-shaped configuration. The original character of the downstairs portion of the lobby and the restaurant have not been preserved. The lobby was once described as "Mission Style" in an old advertising brochure but the bar and restaurant do not particularly exhibit characteristics of this style. At the current time the first floor is open and operating as a bar and restaurant. The remaining downstairs rooms have been gutted in anticipation of future renovation. The second and third story hotel rooms are in a deteriorated state but are much as they must have existed at the turn of the century. The Colorado Street elevation was realigned to have the same roof line as the three story Fourth Street elevation and the brick facade finished in a 1908 remodeling. The main indication on the street fronts that the hotel was built in several stages are the slightly different alignment of the windows where the first two story addition was added to the rear of the building and the window alignment and brick pattern on the west end of the Colorado Street face of the building. A wood and metal cornice with florets stamped into the metal caps the street sides of the building (photo #7). This and the brick facade serve to give a unified appearance to the building. The windows are tall and narrow with 1x1 double hung sash. The upper portions of the third story windows on the entrance corner and Colorado Avenue elevation have multiple lights. Though framed in wood and unarched to the inside of the building, all the windows exhibit segmental arches in the brick veneer at the top of the windows (photo #8). This, along with the small square panes in the upper part of the windows and the regular placement of the windows in the facade provide the simple design interest of the Commercial style building. Even the main entrance to the hotel is somewhat plain and utilitarian appearing. Located at the angled corner on Colorado and Fourth Streets, it has a single door and a building plaque bearing the St. Regis name above the corner window. The cupola above the entrance corner, added sometime between the 1904 addition of the third floor and,the 1924 fire adds an architecturally Interesting focal point. It is an octagonal shaped wood structure with fairly steep pitched roof, open to the air and the low walls and columns are sheathed with the same sheet metal as the cornice. It served as summer sleeping quarters for the family that owned the hotel. Scheduled for demolition before the current owner bought it and began a renovation process, it has recently been remodeled and once again serves as a bar and restaurant. The light colored brick veneer on the street fronts is deteriorating slightly but as a result of the remodeling, window frames on the first floor, the cornice and the cupola have been newly painted." According to local historian David Sundal, the hotel was owned by a man named Burnett. For years after the financial ruin of community businessman and philanthropist William Moyer, he lived in the hotel on Burnett’s dime. *Photograph from the National Archives: National Register of Historic Places yes yes https://catalog.archives.gov/id/84131746National Register of Historic Places webpage for St. Regis Hotel