Historic Hotels

ARIZONA'S HISTORIC HOTELS TOM MIX AND LILLIE LANGTRY SLEPT HERE

TEXT BY DON G. CAMPBELL PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICHARD MAACK

BATTLE ON! DOUGLAS PEPPERED WITH BULLETS!

On a quiet spring evening, almost 80 years later, you can sit in the rustic lobby of Douglas's Gadsden Hotel and imagine that you hear the voices of Col. William A. Shunk's cavalrymen having a drink between tours of duty on the uneasy territorial border.

Or, just 24 miles away and a few years earlier, you are sitting in the bar adjoining the cozy parlor of Bisbee's Copper Queen Hotel, and the gravelly, high-pitched voice of Teddy Roosevelt cuts through the smoky air as he recruits Buckey O'Neill, Yavapai County's sheriff at the time, into his Rough Riders. Or, on another night, you catch sight of British actress Lillie Langtry, stopping in at the hotel with her entourage after the evening's performance at the nearby opera house.

In all, Arizona hosts 10 hotels where time has stopped and the ghosts of longdead players and the legends that surround them pervade the gilded lobbies and wainscoted rooms. Hostels like the tiny Cochise Hotel that time has simply forgotten and which, todayelectricity and indoor plumbing excepted - seem untouched since their territorial and early statehood days. Others, like the Gadsden and Prescott's Hassayampa, St. Michael, and Vendome, have been lovingly restored. Of those 10, only Tucson's Congress Hotel has not yet applied for and received listing on the Interior Department's distinguished National Register of Historic Places.

Ah, but the legends. On that warm April night in 1911 when bullets rained on Douglas, for instance, tensions were high because, just two weeks earlier, another clash between Pancho Villa's forces and Mexican federales in Agua Prieta, the Mexican village abutting downtown Douglas, had sent stray bullets over the border injuring more than a dozen American rebel supporters watching the action and killing one of them.

Thanks in large measure to Colonel Shunk's efforts in keeping sightseers three blocks from the border, a second April conflict was to be bloodless (the rebels abandoned their position in Agua Prieta the next day).

At the height of the gunfire, witnesses

recounted later, Pancho Villa himself rode his horse into the grand lobby of the Gadsden and up the sweeping marble staircase. One of the rounds from his pistol crashed into the elevator shaft, sending hotel patrons scattering; Villa's horse, startled, gouged a deep chip out of the seventh step.

Memories and history make uneasy bedmates, however. Eyewitnesses to the contrary, no historical account of the rebelFederales clash that night puts Pancho Villa within miles of the border; no Mexicans, rebel or otherwise, breached the border's neutrality, and if any horse and rider rode up the staircase, it was at an earlier (or later) time, on some other (or no) occasion, and the horse stumbled (or not) from some other cause.

Still and all, the chip out of the seventh step is unmistakably there, along with the lingering ghosts of Pancho Villa and the no-nonsense cavalry officer Colonel Shunk. But it is 1991, and how do these proud old hostelries fare today?

AT DOUGLAS'S GADSDEN HOTEL

A young Robin Brekhus, the Gadsden's current manager, laughs at the reference to the chip attributed to Villa's horse.

"Let's just say that how the chip got there has never been verified."

The hotel burned to the ground in 1927, she added, leaving the putative Villa-pitted marble staircase as the only structural sur-vivor, "but it was rebuilt from the same plans by the owner, Franklin Mackey, although he added a fourth floor and cocked the staircase to fit with the new lobby."

Brekhus, daughter-in-law of Hartman and Doris Brekhus, wheat farmers from Kenmore, North Dakota, who acquired the hotel in 1988, sighs reflectively.

"In the month before my husband's her folks bought it, the hotel had changed hands four separate times," she says.

The Brekhuses had wintered in Douglas for 30 years the last 18 of them in the Gadsden and they decided that buying the hotel was the only way to save it.

And save it they have. Renovations have reduced the Gadsden's original 169 rooms to 145, but they include 11 apartments, 6 suites, and 15 rooms with kitchenettes. Today, sitting in the lobby illuminated by a huge stained-glass window attributed to Tiffany, a contented Robin Brekhus is pleased with the restoration.

Now back to a brisk winter-visitor trade, Brekhus adds, the Gadsden augments its off-seasons by providing quarters for Elder Hostel programs at nearby Cochise Community College.

AT BISBEE'S COPPER QUEEN HOTEL

Like most of the structures in this historic

Like most of the structures in this historic mining town, the 89-year-old Italianate Copper Queen Hotel gives the appearance of being stuck on the side of a mountain with Crazy Glue. In the Copper Queen's case, it is particularly apt since the foundation of the 44-room hotel had to be blasted out of rock. It was another year and a half before the then-costly $75,000 showplace was ready for unveiling in 1902 by its owner, Phelps Dodge Copper Co.

The large California-redwood-trimmed second-floor lobby area, graced with a wood-burning fireplace and the public dining room that seats 74 in opulent splendor, were an incongruous splash of urbanity in brawling pre-statehood Bisbee. And, sedately, the hotel sat on the fringe of boisterous Brewery Gulch, the heart of a three-block area in which an awed reporter for the El Paso Times counted 68 saloons in 1912.

While much of the restoration work on the Copper Queen took place in the mid'70s under owner Steve Hutchinson, it continued under subsequent owners. Howard and Frances Schonwit of Tucson acquired it in 1989, and they, too, have pledged to maintain its historic integrity.

AT COCHISE'S COCHISE HOTEL

There is the eerie feeling, somehow, that you have backtracked to the previous century when the squeaky screen door slams behind you and you step into Lillie Harrington's kitchenthe only practical way to enter the Cochise Hotel in countthe-population-on-your-fingers Cochise. Harrington has served as manager of the five-bedroom hotel for owner Elizabeth Husband for the past 22 years, and you track dust into her kitchen at your peril.

Eighty-five miles east of Tucson, just off U.S. Route 666, five miles south of Interstate Route 10, the ghost of founder John Rath rocks quietly in the parlor, a turn-of-the-century windup phonograph at his elbow. The room is arranged in stiff formality with a carved wooden sofa upholstered in tan velour (reputed to have belonged to singer Jenny Lind), several chairs, rocking chairs, and tables one holding a signed Tiffany lamp and a huge oak wardrobe with mirrored doors. Rath, the Southern Pacific Railroad's telegrapher at Cochise, had built the quaint little inn in 1882 to accommodate train crews laying over between runs.

The five bedrooms open off a narrow hallway leading from the parlor, and all are furnished in turn-of-the-century antiques. Modern baths, electric lights, and heating elements have been added unobtrusively.

Between the kitchen and the parlor, the dining room - seating capacity 24 at two long, sturdy tables is Harrington's domain at luncheon (12:00 or 1:00 P.M.) and dinner (6:00 P.M. promptly). The luncheon and dinner menu? Take your choice: chicken or steak with potatoes and peas. No quiche. Reservations only.

AT PRESCOTT'S HOTEL ST. MICHAEL

In Arizona's high country, “civilization,” as interpreted to mean the need for formal guest accommodations, was slow in coming. In Prescott, for instance, gold miners drawn to the area since the first strike in 1863 were content to live under the stars or in boardinghouses. The small Hotel Burke wasn't built until 1890 - six years after the town had become the territorial capital. In 1900 a fire leveled most of the town including the Hotel Burke and Prescott was again without a hostelry.

or in boardinghouses. The small Hotel Burke wasn't built until 1890 - six years after the town had become the territorial capital. In 1900 a fire leveled most of the town including the Hotel Burke and Prescott was again without a hostelry.

Rebuilt on a grander scale after the 1900 fire in what is known as a Second Renaissance Revival architectural design, the Burke was renamed the Hotel St. Michael in 1907. And, with approximately 55,000 square feet, 110 rooms, and a full complement of shops, the St. Michael quickly became a focal point of downtown Prescott and the gateway to South Montezuma Street's popular Whiskey Row.

Remodeling efforts in the 1960s resulted in the loss of some of the hotel's historic character; however, recent renovations have centered on recapturing its turn-of-the-century atmosphere. Work is complete on the lobby, which offers a row of specialty shops called St. Michael's Alley, and a San Francisco-style coffeehouse that wraps around the corner location.

AT PRESCOTT'S HOTEL VENDOME

A few blocks away, on South Cortez Street, a half-block from the city plaza, is the Hotel Vendome, a 21-room, two-story building with wide verandas on both lev-els. Since its construction in 1917, the Vendome has flip-flopped as hotel, board-inghouse, and hotel apartment. But it has been restored by the current owners, an investment group, and Prescott architect Bill Otwell. "The story is," says manager Carole Goodwin, "that it was built by a local miner who hit it rich and who had become enamored of a widow with a small child. It was no sooner built, though, when she jilted him. He promptly boarded up the wainscoting in the hallways and in the front lobby and opened the planned hotel as a boardinghouse for young miners." The Vendome subsequently became a residence hotel, Goodwin adds, "with some pretty interesting tenants the story is that Tom Mix was a frequent guest."

Other tenants included the relatives of patients in nearby respiratory clinics, a thriving business in the prewar years spawned by Prescott's clear mountain air. "But," Goodwin recalls, "the hotel fell on hard times until the present owners took over in '83 and set out restoring it, with Mr. Otwell's help, as authentically as possible. All of the original wainscoting was still there." Four of the back bedrooms have been remodeled into two-room suites with half-sunken tubs. "But all of the other oldfashioned claw-foot tubs, with showers added, are still there," Goodwin says.

Today, the Vendome, with its tiny beer and wine bar in the corner of a cozy little lobby where a Continental breakfast is served daily, radiates the casual boardinghouse atmosphere of pre-World War I Prescott. Continued next month with more vintage inns, including classic hotels in Phoenix and Tucson and tales of the Dillinger gang, author Zane Grey, and the Hollywood crowd.

Don G. Campbell, author of books and a syndicated newspaper column, lives in Phoenix. Richard Maack of Phoenix is an architectural, landscape, and fine art photographer.