Victor Hotel

About this property

The Victor Hotel is a historic hotel in the mining town of Victor, Colorado in the United States. The hotel is a four-story Victorian brick building built in 1899-1900 by the town's founders, the Woods brothers. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. Frank and Harry Woods owned land at 4th Street and Victor Avenue where they intended to construct a building. In March 1894, they broke ground and were excavating when then found a body of rich ore. Their building construction efforts halted and they opened the Gold Coin Mine. In August 1899 the entire business district was destroyed in a fire. The original wooden Hotel Victor, which was located across the street from the present hotel, was leveled, and the shaft house at the current Victor Hotel location was also leveled in the fire. The tunnels of the Gold Coin Mine ran under the Victor business district and a total of $6 million in gold was extracted from the mine. Reputedly "one of its depositors mined directly beneath the bank at five hundred feet from the surface." The Woods brothers had the four-story Victor Bank building constructed in 1899; It was completed on December 24, 1899. The Bank Block building was representative of turn-of-the-century commercial buildings. The Italianate structure with bays, large storefront windows and cornice work is the largest building in Victor. When it opened it held the Woods brothers' bank, First National Bank of Victor, lodging rooms, and consulting and retail businesses. The Woods had a reversal of fortunes. Bank examiners found that the bank was insolvent and closed it on November 4, 1903. The Woods brothers then sold the building. A subsequent bank in the building was the Citizen's Bank of Victor. It was once considered the most modern edifice in the Cripple Creek District. Businesses in the building included Western Union Telegraph Company, H.H. Rosser and the Colorado Telephone Company. Businessmen who operated within the building included Dr. H.G. Thomas, father of Lowell Thomas, J.W. Huff, Dean Merrill Bodwell, and J.E. Ferguson. A.E. Carlton bought the Bank Building and owned and operated the City Bank. A hospital was operated on the fourth floor by 1906 and, during a difficult winter, also functioned as a morgue. The offices on the second and third store remained. Two of the businesses in the building in 1908 were a jewelry and grocery store. The City Bank closed during the depression. Bill Lehr's photography studio and the Brass Rail Café and Bar were located on the first floor in the 1930s. Reindel's soda fountain, Henry Munsted's gift shop and a restaurant did business in the building in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. In the 1960s businesses in the building closed, the building was vacant and became dilapidated over the next two decades.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Teller County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Teller County.

More historic places in Colorado

Browse all historic places in Colorado.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Colorado history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.