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Oxford Hotel - #7
1612 17th Street
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Architectural style: Richardsonian Romanesque Built: 1891 Architects: Frank E. Edbrooke |
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The Oxford Hotel, Denver's oldest operating hotel, opened on October 3, 1891. IT was financed by a group led by Adolph Zang and designed by architect Frank E. Edbrooke. The original five-story structure was an immediate success, in part because of its location near busy Union Station. By 1902 its four hundred rooms were no longer sufficient to meet demand. A fifty-five room addition was constructed on the Wazee Street side. The business continued to grow, and in 1912 the Oxford Annex was built. Business remained brisk until after World War II, when the collapse of railroad transportation occurred and decline set in in Lower Downtown. Edbrooke was considered a master of street architecture, having designed many of the well-known buildings constructed during the 1880s and 1890s, including the Denver Dry Building, Central Presbyterian Church, the Masonic Temple, and the second oldest hotel in Denver, the Brown Palace. The classical simplicity of the exterior does not advertise the extravagant interior that opening-day guests discovered. According to the Rocky Mountain News, the Oxford offered the latest technology along with Gilded Age opulence. The hotel had its own power plant and a steam heating system, electric and gas lighting, and "on each floor bath rooms and separate water closets" with the "latest improved sanitary appliances." Included for guests were dining rooms, a barber shop, a library, a pharmacy, a Westurn Union office, stables, and a splendid saloon. In 1933 the Cruise Room opened inside the Oxford. Designed by Charles Jaka in the Art Deco style and supposedly modeled after the lounge on the Queen Mary, the long, narrow bar has its own listing in the National Register of Historic Places. It won the prestigious Miami Art Deco Society's annual award in 1984. In 1979 the hotel was purchased by investors who undertook a three-year restoration costing more than $12 million, with a grand reopening celebrated on June 19, 1983. |
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