Hotel Boulderado

A historic hotel that opened on New Year's Day 1909, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel features a stunning stained-glass canopy ceiling in its lobby and has been a Boulder institution for over a century.

The Hotel Boulderado opened on New Year's Day 1909 as Boulder's first luxury hotel, a civic project that took nearly a decade of fundraising to realize. The name was coined by combining "Boulder" and "Colorado," and the hotel was equipped with the latest modern amenities including an Otis elevator, telephones in every room, and steam heating. Its crown jewel was and remains the magnificent stained-glass canopy ceiling in the lobby, which bathes the space in colored light and has survived more than a century of Colorado winters. The hotel quickly became the social center of Boulder, hosting presidents, celebrities, and university events.

The hotel's most unsettling ghost story involves Rooms 302 and 304, where a couple allegedly carried out a suicide pact in the early twentieth century. According to the account, a man and woman checked in and the man killed himself with chloroform while the woman was in the bath. She attempted to follow through on the pact but did not have enough chloroform, so she left the hotel to purchase more from a local chemist. The pharmacist, suspicious of the request, notified the constable, who intercepted the woman before she could return. Since then, guests in both rooms have reported cold spots, the sensation of being watched, and objects moving on their own.

The most frequently sighted apparition is a young woman in a white Victorian dress who appears on the fifth floor. She has been described by multiple guests and staff members over the years, though her identity remains unknown. Some believe she may be connected to the suicide pact rooms below. The fifth floor is also home to a life-sized portrait of Beautrice "Honey Bee" Lennartz, a beloved Boulder socialite who lived from 1904 to 1998 and frequented the hotel dining room for decades. Some visitors say they sense her presence near her portrait, as though she never stopped coming to dinner.

Throughout the hotel, guests and staff have reported flickering lights and electrical disturbances, doors opening and closing on their own, and unexplained cold drafts in the hallways. The hotel's director of housekeeping and in-house historian, Laurel McKown, who worked at the Boulderado for forty years, offered a skeptical perspective, noting that people tend to see what they are looking for in a building with this much history. Whether the spirits are real or simply the echoes of over a century of human drama, the Hotel Boulderado remains one of Boulder's most atmospheric and storied landmarks.