The Astor House is a historic stone hotel from the earliest years of Golden, Colorado

Golden, Colorado

The City of Golden is a home rule municipality that is the county seat of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States. Golden lies along Clear Creek at the edge of the foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Founded during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush on 16 June 1859, the mining camp was...

. Associated with prominent area pioneers, it was also a pioneering effort in historic preservation

Historic preservation

Historic preservation is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance...

 in the region. Today it is a museum open to the public, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

.

History

The Astor House was originally built in 1867 by Seth Lake, a pioneer hotelkeeper who came to the area in the early 1860s. An upgrade from his original Lake House hotel on the site, it was carved of sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

 quarried by Charles R. Foreman & Co. at the far west end of 12th Street which the hotel stands on. The premier hostelry of Golden, it served patrons from miners to Territorial legislators who met nearby. It was Golden's only known hotel not to have served alcohol

Alcohol

In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....

, as the devout Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 owner was a temperance

Temperance movement

A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...

 man who would not allow it on his premises. Later the hotel was owned by German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 immigrant Ida Goetze. It gradually faded from hotel to boarding house, and was altered by four fires and repaired to its present appearance.

Preservation

In 1971 the property was acquired by the Golden Downtown Improvement District to be destroyed for a parking lot, a fate befalling a number of Golden's landmarks including the church Lake had faithfully served. City Councilor Ruben Hartmeister raised concern about whether a place of its history should be preserved. Standing alone he was not initially listened to, but Golden's modern historic preservation movement was born. Citizens rallied to the aid of the Astor House and formed the Golden Landmarks Association to try and save it. On June 13, 1972 Golden's people voted to save it, with 69% voting in favor. Afterward it became the Astor House Hotel Museum, which is open to the general public today as a historic house museum. The museum depicts life in the hotel in the early 1900s.

External links

• Astor House Museum
• Golden Landmarks Association