We heard this week that that the Brown Palace hotel elevator was originally powered by an artesian well. We’d like to find out if this is still the source.

“With the artesian pressure supplying the driving force to operate the elevators in the Brown Palace Hotel and run the bellows for the Trinity Church organ, the underground waters of the Denver Basin have been put to beneficial use since the late 1800’s…”  The state site confirms this, but it doesn’’t indicate whether that’ is still the power source:  

The artesian water soothed many a weary reveler.  There were four original Turkish baths in Colorado: Colorado Springs – Broadmoor Hotel Turkish Baths, on Larimer – J M Case Turkish Baths, The Windsor Hotel Turkish Baths and The Brown Palace Hotel Turkish Baths, which is the current spa.  Today the The Brown Palace Web site says that all the drinking water in the hotel is supplied by the artesian well but says nothing about the elevator.

A little history which you may or may not know from the Brown’s Web site:

• On Aug. 12, 1892 – 120 years ago – The Brown Palace Hotel opened its doors in the heart of downtown Denver. The hotel has remained open and welcomed guests every minute of every day since opening.
• Every U.S. president has visited The Brown Palace since Teddy Roosevelt (1905), with the exception of Calvin Coolidge.
• The Brown Palace contains 12,400 surface feet of onyx, a semiprecious variety of quartz, which was the most ever used in a single building at the time the hotel was constructed.
• The hotel’s original artesian well is located 720 feet deep beneath the Ship Tavern floor and still provides water to every faucet in the hotel.
• Four of the hotel’s suites are named for famous guests: The Beatles Suite, Eisenhower Suite, Reagan Suite, and Teddy Roosevelt Suite.
• Before the Beatles’ visit in 1964, the hotel saw a great surge in applications for housekeeping by young girls. After the Beatles’ stay, monetary offers were made for the dishes from which they ate and the sheets on which they slept.
• In 1937, the hotel opened the Skyline Apartments which housed permanent residents in suites with kitchenettes on the top two floors of the hotel. The last of these residents moved out in the mid-1980s.
• The Brown Palace Club, located on the second floor, served as campaign headquarters for Dwight D. Eisenhower prior to his election as president.
• Two of the cast iron grillwork panels on the railing surrounding the hotel’s eight-story atrium are upside down.
• Soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division tried rappelling from the roof during a visit to the hotel during World War II.
• Except for crackers and sandwich bread, the hotel prepares all of its own baked goods in a unique, carousel oven – catalogued at more than 65 years old. The oven is one of only three in the world known to be in existence and is still used every day.
• President Eisenhower hit a wayward golf ball while practicing in the room and made a dent in the fireplace mantel in the Eisenhower Suite. It remains today in a shadowbox as a souvenir.

Related articles

• Happy anniversary, Brown Palace Hotel! By T. Ravlin Lyte (ingoodtastedenver.com)
• Brown Palace evacuated after bomb threat (kdvr.com)
• Brown Palace Hotel evacuated by bomb threat (denverpost.com)
• Insiders Report: Top 100 Illuminati Banksters Met for Satanic Child Sacrifice in Denver Colorado on June 20th 2012! (project.nsearch.com)
• Champagne Cascade At The Brown Palace Toasts Veterans (denver.cbslocal.com)