The General Palmer Hotel has been entertaining guests to Durango since it was constructed in 1898. The hotel is within the Main Avenue Historic District, covering the lower seven blocks of the street. The exterior is brick and is subdivided at the second floor line.The building seems to have held - at least on its first floor - three businesses by 1904. The northernmost third of the building was a saloon, the middle third was a furniture store, and the southern third was a grocery store, based on the town's Sanborn Fire Insurance map. By 1910, the hotel occupied the north third of the ground floor but was called the Hotel Savoy. The middle third tenant was a drugstore, and the south third was still a grocery store. In 1980, the hotel lobby was in the north third and the Solid Muldoon Saloon was to the south.The second-story windows are plain with flat stone lintels and sills. The northern section has a third story with a bracketed decorated entablature parapet with dentil work.The patio balconies on the second and third floors of the main portion of the historic hotel overlook the Durango &amp; Silverton Railroad depot, just one block away, with its restored steam engines that still take passengers on the historic scenic route to Silverton. The building is a contributing element of the Main Avenue Historic District, listed in the National Register in 1980.

General Palmer Hotel Building in 1904 with three businesses (Sanborn Map Company p. 8)

Hotel Savoy and two other businesses in General Palmer Hotel building in 1910 (Sanborn Map Company p.8)

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The General Palmer Hotel was built in Durango in 1898. The hotel is named for its founder, William Jackson Palmer. Palmer was the engineer and Civil War general who founded Colorado Springs in 1870 and began the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Company. The building and many of the rooms in the main portion of the hotel are furnished with antiques from the late Victorian era.  The fanciest room contains a red rocking chair that Teddy Roosevelt supposedly favored on his visits to Durango for business or for hunting and fishing.

General Palmer Hotel

Mosey on up historic Main Avenue to see the premier historic buildings from the late 19th/early 20th century.

The General Palmer Hotel has been entertaining guests to Durango since it was constructed in 1898. The hotel is within the Main Avenue Historic District, covering the lower seven blocks of the street. The exterior is brick and is subdivided at the second floor line. The building seems to have held - at least on its first floor - three businesses by 1904. The northernmost third of the building was a saloon, the middle third was a furniture store, and the southern third was a grocery store, based on the town's Sanborn Fire Insurance map. By 1910, the hotel occupied the north third of the ground floor but was called the Hotel Savoy. The middle third tenant was a drugstore, and the south third was still a grocery store. In 1980, the hotel lobby was in the north third and the Solid Muldoon Saloon was to the south. The second-story windows are plain with flat stone lintels and sills. The northern section has a third story with a bracketed decorated entablature parapet with dentil work. The patio balconies on the second and third floors of the main portion of the historic hotel overlook the Durango &amp; Silverton Railroad depot, just one block away, with its restored steam engines that still take passengers on the historic scenic route to Silverton. The building is a contributing element of the Main Avenue Historic District, listed in the National Register in 1980.

The Strater Hotel is an amazingly beautiful building, both from the outside and within; the Huffington Post called the Strater one of the world's ten most beautiful buildings! This has come from decades of painstaking restoration and collecting of antique furniture and furnishings. Even if you are not staying at the hotel, you are welcome to enter the lobby and walk around. The building is packed with display cases holding all kinds of items, from a golden gun to a ladies fan. So, who was Strater? Believe it or not, Henry Stater was a pharmacist from Cleveland. He, along with some help from his father Antone, and brothers Fred and Frank, spent 70 grand on the building. The original portion of the building is four stories on the corner of Main and 7th Avenue. The next addition was placed to the south of the original and is three stories tall. Two-story bay windows top the corner entrance to the Diamond Belle Saloon. The building contains a four-story atrium topped by a skylight. Strater's pharmacy occupied part of the ground floor of the hotel, and Henry left the hotel management to H.L. Rice, the Proprietor who leased (or bought) the building from Strater. In the wintertime, some locals would abandon their own homes to live in the coziness of the Strater's rooms, each of which contained a wood-burning stove. The hotel also featured a three-story privy. Somehow, Strater neglected to omit the pharmacy space from the lease and was being charged exorbitant rent. Strater decided to teach Rice a lesson, and built a competing hotel, the Columbian Hotel, to the south. The Silver Panic of 1895 caused both hotels to go out of business. The Bank of Cleveland repossessed the Strater, and sold the hotel to Hattie Washburn and Charles E. Stilwell. This ushered in a more refined era of opera and fine dining at the "Hotel Strater." Three generations of the Barker family have owned and operated the hotel since the 1920s, when Earl A. Barker Sr. and his partners bought the aging building. One frequent visitor was the Western author Louis L'Amour, who enjoyed staying in Room 222, directly over the Diamond Belle Saloon, so he could hear the music while he wrote. The room is now named for L'Amour. There are 92 other rooms in the hotel, too, some of which are said to house some spectral freeloaders.

The Strater Hotel has towered over downtown Durango since its completion in 1887. Constructed of red brick with hand-carved sandstone cornices and sills, this landmark structure is part of the Main Avenue National Register Historic District and is also home to a local history museum filled with artifacts and memorabilia. The antique furniture and historic furnishings throughout the hotel are part of the hotel's allure and offer the largest collection of Victorian American-made walnut furniture in the world. The eclectic style of the imposing building combines elements of Italianate Romanesque and Renaissance detailing. The hotel has been called one of the world's most beautiful buildings and one of the most prominent historic hotels in Colorado.

Strater Hotel

The Rochester Hotel went through a few delays and changes of ownership while being constructed from 1890 to 1892. It was called "Peeples Hotel" after local accountant and county commissioner E.T. Peeples. An early operator was named Jerry Sullivan and had previously worked for the railroad. Miss Mary Ann Finn owned the hotel from 1905 to 1920 and renamed it the "Rochester Hotel." The hotel was at a disadvantage since many other local hotels were larger and closer to the railroad depot. It catered to those looking for lower rates and people looking for long-term boarding. The daughter of a local rancher, Bertha M. Graden, was one of the later owners of the hotel, as was Edward J. Gemmill. Henry M. Valentine, a major local property owner, was at one time the owner of the Rochester Hotel. The front porch of the Rochester Hotel features Tuscan columns at the central bay entrance. Above the porch is a balcony with a wood paneled balustrade. What appeared as the original front of the building is now located ten feet inside the structure, but the design is similar. The windows are arched and the building is topped by a pressed metal bracketed cornice with dentils and an arched cornice reading "1892" and "ROCHESTER." A postcard of the building as it looked in 1909 and insurance maps show that the addition formed the front portion of the structure. The sign in this era was pressed tin. A neon sign was attached to the building in the 1940s or 1950s, and has been restored. The classical style entry porch and balcony date to this era, too. Several windows and doors have been added to parts of the first floor facades since the early 1900s. The final addition to the building, sometime between the 1919 and 1931 Sanborn fire insurance maps were drawn, expanded the rear of the building. After this expansion, the interior held about thirty hotel rooms. Three interior bathrooms were installed after 1927. The building underwent interior and exterior renovations in the early 1990s. Much of the interior was gutted and rebuilt to hold sixteen luxury hotel rooms. The exterior still resembles the appearance in the 1940s, except for some modifications to the rear façade. The interior décor currently features memorabilia related to the many Western movies filmed in and around Durango, the "Hollywood of the Rockies." The building is considered significant as an example of the commercial development of Durango for the time period of 1909 to 1945. It represents a working class boarding house or hotel typically visited by salesmen, tourists, and others of lower budgets. The current owner also manages a bed and breakfast across the street called the Leland House.

The two-story, red brick building that houses the Rochester Hotel was built in three stages. The original part dates to 1890 to 1892, when it was named "Peeples Hotel." This makes the Rochester one of the oldest hotels in Durango. Additions were made around 1909 and 1920. The building's exterior was restored in the early 1990s to its 1940s appearance. The interior was gutted and redone into more spacious hotel rooms with individual bathrooms. The building was listed individually in the National Register of Historic Places in 1996, as an example of the town's commerce in the first half of the nineteenth century. The building functioned then as a hotel or boarding house frequented by travelers or salesmen of limited means.

Rochester Hotel

The Newman Block building was named after Charles Newman. Newman was a prosperous pharmacist who owned four pharmacies with his brothers-in-law. As a discoverer of the Swansea Mine in Rico, he added to his personal fortune, and represented the area in the Colorado Senate. Newman's drugstore in Durango went on to become S.G. Wall Druggist. The building's elevator was a newfangled curiosity in the 1890s; people would come to the building just to ride the big-city contraption. Special bank vaults were constructed into the second and third floors of the building for the original tenant, Smelter National Bank, who went belly up in 1897. Durango National Bank was a later tenant of the building, but it, too, ended up crashing, even though it was started by William J. Palmer of the D&amp;RGW Railroad Company (the Civil War general and founder of Colorado Springs) and Alexander Hunt, a Colorado Territorial Governor. The building housed a bank on the first floor in the south half in 1910, with a hardware store in the north half, along Main Avenue. The second and third stories were office space, according to the 1910 Sanborn map of the town. The building was converted in 1928 into the Kiva Theater and was bought by 20th Century Fox in the 1930s. It served as an indoor movie theater through the 1980s. Actor Jimmy Stewart was made an honorary mayor of town in 1952 in a ceremony at the theater, while filming the movie "Naked Spur." A major fire occurred on the block in 1974, burning down six buildings mid-block, but the building survived. In the late 1980s, the theater closed and the building was converted into ground floor retail space with offices upstairs. Newman Block was the first individual building to be listed on the National Register from Durango; it was added in 1980. The first floor has housed a number of businesses, including a florist and dress shops, since the 1990s. One current tenant is The Sparrow Mercantile clothing shop. It has been called the fanciest office building in Durango. The round turret at the southeast corner of the structure once held a flagpole. The tall sheet metal parapet is decorated with swags and wreaths.

The Newman Block is a three-story sandstone building in the 800 block of Main Avenue. Constructed from 1891 to 1892 by Charles Newman, the building is Richardsonian Romanesque in style. The original tenant of the Newman Block was Smelter National Bank, which lasted only five years before succumbing to the aftereffects of the Silver Crash of 1893. Durango National Bank had their turn in the building, too, but they ended up closing.  In 1928, the building was converted into the Kiva Theater. 20th Century Fox bought the theater in the 1930s, where movies were shown into the 1980s. Since the 1990s, the building has offered retail spaces on the first floor and office space on the upper stories.

Newman Block

The four-story building that became the Central Hotel building was a "saloon and games room" on the first floor in 1898, with rooms above. In 1910 a bank occupied the ground floor. The bank's neighbors to the south on the Main Avenue block in 1910 were mainly saloons with a smattering of other shops, according to the Sanborn map of town. According to local records, Colorado native and up-and-coming boxer Jack Dempsey defeated Andy Maller in 10 rounds at the hotel in 1915. He won $50 for the victory, a small purse compared to what he would win after becoming the heavyweight champion of the world in 1919.  The Central Hotel building managed to squeeze four bays into what would usually only hold three bays, giving the narrow windows a vertical emphasis. The building's base is made of sandstone and the upper floors are brick. Three chimneys on the front wall plane look like pilasters but continue through the cornice and the mansard roof. The mansard roof with round topped dormer windows forms a fourth story. The building contributes to the Main Avenue Historic District, listed in the NRHP in 1980. The El Rancho Tavern occupies the first floor, a fixture in town since 1942!

This narrow Italianate building was completed in 1892 and and served as the city's premiere hotel for many decades. The hotel was the site of future heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey's knockout of prominent boxer Andy Malloy in 1915. A historic mural of the bout on the Tenth Street facade has been restored, along with many other architectural features. The building has served a number of roles in the past century, being home to a saloon, post office, and bank, among other purposes. Restored at a cost of over a hundred thousand dollars in 2001, the building could have been lost in a 2006 fire. The building has been home to a popular local watering hole on the first floor for many years. 

Central Hotel and Jack Dempsey Mural

The Main Street Furnishings Building has decorated Main Avenue since 1889. The building is more elaborate than many of the structures on the street, with a cast iron and glass façade on the first story topped with clerestory windows, some of which are stained glass. The central entrance door is recessed about five feet from the sidewalk. Pairs of pilaster with Corinthian capitals frame the second-story windows. Above is a decorated entablature topped by a very elaborate bracketed cornice with dentil detailing. One year after construction, the building was a liquor warehouse with the second story vacant, as seen on the town's Sanborn Fire Insurance map. The building was vacant in 1898, and contained a saloon by 1904, according to the insurance maps. Balthasar "Balsey" Kern has been named as one of the early owners of this building. His saloon lasted until about 1912; the 1910 insurance map depicts a saloon in the building. A German immigrant named Balthasar Kern settled in Erie, Pennsylvania, in the 1850s, where he operated a saloon and restaurant in the mid-1880s. He and his wife, Alvina Brown, had seven children, none of whom were named Balthasar, so there is no "junior" who mav have headed west; this leaves the father as the likely candidate. The 1919 Sanborn fire insurance map places a grocery warehouse in the building. The Animas Trading Company shop has moved out of the first-floor commercial space. The locally-owned clothing shop has relocated a few blocks south. The Main Street Furnishings Building is available to lease in 2020. The space occupies nearly 3,000 square feet, including a basement storage area and a mezzanine level for office space. The building underwent interior renovations recently and boasts an interior with refinished oak wood flooring, exposed brick walls, and 14-foot high ceilings on the first floor.

The Main Street Furnishings Building, at 1015 Main Avenue in Durango, was once the location of the Balthasar Kern Saloon. The building is considered one of the most historic within the Main Avenue National Register of Historic Places Historic District, covering the southern seven blocks of the street. 
The building until recently housed the Animas Trading Company store on the first floor.

Downtown Durango, Colorado Old West Walking Tour

General Palmer Hotel

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