Denver's Brown Palace Hotel Will Find New Life As An Autograph Collection Hotel

August 17, 2012 at 9:24 AM | by ASchechter | Comments (0)

120 years after it initially opened (that's 1892, for any of you who haven't had your coffee yet), the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver has been scooped up by Marriott's Autograph Collection, which includes The Cosmopolitan in Vegas, The Algonquin in New York, and 30 others.

According to Denver Business Journal, Brown Palace is the city's second-oldest hotel (after The Oxford), and over the years has hosted presidents (Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Clinton) as well as big name guests like the Beatles, Oprah, Jimmy Stewart, and even Queen Marie of Romania.

If any of those fine people once counted themselves as Marriott Rewards members, we bet they're kicking themselves now!

The hotel has a pretty interesting history, including a rather hurried opening back in August of 1892, when, due to a Triennial Conclave of the Knights Templar, the hotel was forced to open slightly ahead of schedule:

"As a result of the influx, on August 6, the Brown Palace opened the unfinished hotel to accomodate the Templars. They provided a few rooms, many sleeping cots in the hallways and a lavish banquet � while workers labored continually on the building.
It wasn�t until the next week, on August 12, with preparations completed that the hotel opened to accept the public. Room rates varied from $1, $2 and $3 per night up to $4.50 for the best 100 rooms in the hotel."

Wow. $4.50 for the best room in the hotel. We honestly can't even fathom that. We're pretty sure we spend more on toothpaste these days!

Brown Palace will make the official switch to Marriott next month, though not much about the hotel is expected to change.

[Photo: Denver Public Library]

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