The Weatherford Hotel is located in the heart of downtown Flagstaff. It’s part of Northern Arizona’s history, and owner Henry Taylor plans to keep it that way.

Taylor, who bought the building in 1975, spoke with Arizona Highways about the Weatherford’s past four months of renovations, which are intended to restore a hotel that opened in 1900 to its original, historical look.

What renovations are being done?
It’s a project trying to restore the main floor of the hotel itself. In the beginning it was built with 19-foot ceilings, and it was cut in half in 1916 and put into two floors instead of one, so we wanted to restore [the lobby] back to its original 19-foot ceiling height. We also added six new rooms to the building. 

How important is it to you to preserve the hotel’s historical look?
It’s absolutely essential.  That’s why we’re here, to restore the building. It’s probably the most iconic building in Northern Arizona. The whole goal is to take it back to the way it was.

How are the new rooms different from the existing rooms?
They’re newer rooms, but again, when they cut the ceiling in half, they added 12 new rooms to the building, and we had to take those rooms out because structurally, they weren’t sound enough. All of these years, we’ve been working around that. So we just [finished] putting the rooms back, along with the lobby entrance.  The historic nature of the rooms is furnished well, but they’re modern rooms.

Have you uncovered anything interesting and new in the building?
It’s always new and exciting and different. It’s just nice to see the building open back up again. When I bought the building in 1975, I think it had 42 rooms in it; we’ve since then reduced it down to 16. So the whole idea is to open the building up to what it used to be like. Over the years they kept cutting it down to smaller rooms because there was a demand for hotel rooms. But after a while you can only cut and piece so many parcels before it’s not reusable. We’ve opened it back up in this renovation to make it more like it was in the beginning.

What is the Gopher Hole?
The Gopher Hole was originally an event space and function room, and right now it is an event space, restaurant and game room. We took on the restoration two years ago for the basement area. I bought the building in 1975, and I really couldn’t restore the building until I restored the structural engineering in the basement and on up into the roof. It was originally called the Gopher Hole at the turn of the century, and we were able to restore the area structurally to the point where we could reopen it.

— Isabel Menzel

To learn more about the Weatherford Hotel, call 928-779-1919 or visit www.weatherfordhotel.com.