Spencer Penrose courtesy of Wikipedia |
One of the most notable buildings in Colorado Springs is the Broadmoor Hotel, a 5 Star resort that sits below Pikes Peak. Complete with its own pond and golf course, the hotel has hosted major golf tournaments as well as local banquets thanks to its founder, Spencer Penrose. The 5th of seven sons, Penrose was born November 2, 1865 in Philadelphia. His father, Richard Alexander Fullerton Penrose was a doctor and founded Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His mother, Sarah Hannah Boies, favored the simple life. Spencer and his siblings attended Harvard, but unlike his brothers who graduated with high honors, Spencer graduated at the bottom of his class. He didn’t have the academic drive to become doctors or lawyers that brothers did. Rather, the west and frontier life beckoned him and after graduating, he made his way to Las Cruces, New Mexico where he opened several business and sold them for just enough to cut his losses and move on to something else. In 1892, his brother, Richard and childhood friend, Charles L. Tutt (who was a real estate developer in Colorado Springs), informed him of a potential gold rush in Cripple Creek, Colorado. Penrose made his way to Colorado, where Tutt loaned him the money to buy a ½ stake in Tutt’s Cripple Creek real estate business, to include the Cash on Delivery Mine. The mine was one of the most successful in Cripple Creek, thus solidifying Penrose and Tutt’s partnership that took them to a new business of ore processing in Old Colorado City.
courtesy Colorado Springs
Gazette
To become
successful in ore processing, Penrose and Tutt sold their Cash on Delivery Mine,
formed a new company, Colorado-Philadelphia Reduction Company, and brought in
partner Charles Mather MacNeill. MacNeill was considered an expert in ore
processing and in 1899, the three met with success; their plant was treating
over 3 million worth of ore from Cripple Creek annually. The trio’s partnership
continued (and enabled them to create a mining, milling, and real estate empire)
and took them to Bingham Canyon, Utah where they followed the advice of Daniel
C. Jackling regarding success in mining copper deposit. A survey of the canyon’s
ore deposit revealed the deposit contained 2 percent of copper that could
efficiently be extracted from the ore. Penrose formed the Utah Copper Company
in 1903 and worked with a new team to design a mill to extract the copper at a
rate that was considered extremely fast, but the gamble paid off and Penrose
and his team mined and milled more copper than imaginable. His success in Utah led
him to invest in copper mining in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada.
Julie Penrose
El Pomar Foundation
Having made a
sizeable fortune in the mining industry, Penrose returned to Colorado Springs. It
was here that he met widow Julie Villiers McMillan. The two became friends and later
married April 1906 in London, England, despite Penrose claiming he would always
remain a bachelor. Spencer and Julie honeymooned throughout Europe. Their stay
in grand hotels inspired Spencer to build his own in Colorado Springs. Before
that occurred, Spencer and Julie bought and renovated a home near a close
friend, to include adding two stories, marble tiles, carved wood panels and
crystal chandeliers, and hiring the Olmsted Brothers to design the grounds
around the home. (Today, the home is known as the Penrose House, is on the
National Register of Historic Places and free for conferences and other such
gatherings.)
Broadmoor Hotel
Colorado Artifctual
Penrose again
partnered with Tutt and the two came up with a plan to build a road to the top
of Pikes Peak in an effort to promote tourism. The road cost $283,000 and was
completed in August of 1916. That same year Penrose organized the first car
race to the top of the peak. (The Broadmoor Pike’s Peak International Hill
Climb still runs today, on the last Sunday in June, and competitors are by
invitation only). While working on the road to the top of the peak, Penrose
also wanted to build his hotel, or rather, purchase the Antler’s Hotel from Colorado
Springs founder William Jackson Palmer and rebuild it. But Palmer wouldn’t sell
and Penrose ended up buying a site outside city boundaries for $90,000. He
hired several architects to design the hotel of his dreams, and after careful
consideration, went on to choose a design from the Warren and Wetmore Firm, who
are known for their work on Grand Central terminal in New York City. Ground was
broken in April 1917 and in June 1918, the Broadmoor hosted its opening
ceremony.
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1 comment:
So fascinating, Julie. Thanks for sharing about the hotel's history with us!
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