Image: Hotel Bozeman 02 - Bozeman Montana - 2013-07-09

Description: Looking north at the main entrance of the Bozeman Hotel (321 E. Main), in Bozeman, Montana. The Bozeman Hotel was built in 1890 as part of the city's attempt to become the state capital. Local citizens raised $20,000, and bankers from Boston, Massachusetts, (who'd bought land in the area) contributed another $100,000 to have the hotel built. Architect George Hancock designed the 136-room hotel in a Romanesque Revival vernacular style. The Main Street facade feaured arched windows and stained-glass in the first-floor windows. In the middle of the Main Street and Rouse Avenue sides were a slight project two bays wide, topped by crenelations. On the corner of Main and Rouse, a turret jutted outward beginning at the second floor and rose to a small room that formed the only part of the fifth floor. Ornate iron balconies adored the turret and some of the windows on the Main Street side on the second and fourth floors. It opened on March 2, 1891, and the final cost was somewhere between $110,000 and $150,000. The Bozeman Hotel was considered the most elaborate between Minneapolis and Seattle. It had electric call bells, steam heat, fire escapes, and both hot and cold running water. The hotel built its own electric generating plant to supply it with power. The lobby had an ornate, pressed-tin ceiling and was brilliantly lit. It had a large public reading room, a dining room that sat 150, a bar featuring dark stained wood, a barber shop, and a luxurious women's parlor on the second floor that was accessed by a highly-decorated iron staircase. Guests accessed the upper floors via a carved, curving wooden staircase. Iron columns supported the upper floors, and were decorated in the then-emerging Beaux-Arts style. An annex was constructed concurrently with the hotel. This two-story structure had three segments, each three bays wide, and was designed to house shops and business that could cater to hotel guests. New owners in 1974 turned it from a hotel to an office building, retail space, and condos. Most of the lobby was eliminated, but a small portion -- including the carved stair, part of the lobby ceiling, and some of the iron columns -- was retained. The Bozeman Hotel is a contributing property to the Main Street Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 21, 1987.
Title: Hotel Bozeman 02 - Bozeman Montana - 2013-07-09
Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23165290@N00/9373762488/
Author: Tim Evanson
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0
License: CC BY-SA 2.0
License Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Attribution Required?: Yes