“If only these walls could talk,” I said to my husband as we relaxed in our Victorian room on the fifth floor of the Boulderado Hotel in downtown Boulder, Colorado. We had been trundled up five floors in the original Otis elevator that has served the hotel since its opening on New Year’s Eve 1908 for a grand gala, before guests began checking in on Jan. 1, 1909.
The bell staff took pride in trying to get the small car to stop in line with the floor they were aiming for, and several times, we laughed along with them as they jolted us up and down to get the perfect fit before sliding open the gate and sending us on our way.
It was our first weekend of travel post-pandemic, and we celebrated by ordering a bottle of bubbly and some house-made chocolate with ginger and cranberries to be waiting in our room when we arrived. But before we popped the cork, we poked around our room and explored the slant-roofed closets and period furniture. I scrambled up onto a settee to peer out our alcove window toward the famous Pearl Street Mall and then flopped onto the bed to read the history of the hotel and wonder at the people who had stayed there in the last 112 years.
