New Sheridan Hotel History
Originally constructed in 1891, the Sheridan Hotel has been welcoming guests for over one hundred and thirty-five years. Like the Town itself, the Hotel was built with riches from gold and silver discoveries in the surrounding San Juan Mountains. The original Sheridan Hotel was a two-story wooden frame structure located directly east of the Courthouse. A fire destroyed the building in 1893. The present brick building at 231 West Colorado Avenue was erected next door to the burnt lot. The newly constructed, three-story building was completed in 1895 and reopened as the New Sheridan Hotel, this time in brick. Thus, the Sheridan has been “new” since 1895. No other attempts were made to rebuild on the original site for nearly a century, and the land appears in many historic photos as a grassy yard in front of the adjoining Sheridan Opera House. The American Room still retains two west-facing windows that once looked out onto the grass of the original Hotel site.
The early days of the New Sheridan Hotel saw it blossom as the growing Town’s social center. The Continental Room Restaurant boasted sixteen velvet-lined, curtained booths, each equipped with a button for discreetly summoning the waiter only when needed. The service and cuisine of the adjoining American Room was said to have rivaled the Brown Palace in Denver.
The current two-story building that houses the New Sheridan Restaurant, additional Hotel rooms and The Roof, was constructed in 1994 on the site of the original Hotel. Styled so closely to the architecture of the 1895 building next door, the two are nearly indistinguishable.
Recently the entire Hotel facility underwent its first major renovation in over a hundred years. What had slowly become a run-down miner’s hostel was magically restored into the glowing centerpiece it had once been. Monthly rentals, bunk-bed rooms and community bathrooms were stripped and recreated as 26 luxury Hotel rooms and suites, complete with Victorian era antiques. Mid-way through the lobby, there is an original wall of hand-tooled pine different from the rest of the decor. Upon closer inspection, one can see how this divider wall, stripped of dozens of layers of paint and preserved from destruction and was used to dictate the meticulous recreation of the entire ground floor.
A few years go the owners of the Hotel embarked on another remodel and invested millions of dollars in the Hotel, Chop House & Wine Bar, Parlor and The Roof. World renowned interior designer Nina Campbell was enlisted, rooms with shared baths were removed and all now have luxurious private baths. Acoustic engineers were brought in for extensive sound proofing in the rooms over the bar.
Over the last few decades our resident artist, Roger Mason, became a main stay of the New Sheridan. You can see his beautiful works of art throughout the Hotel, Restaurant, and Historic Bar. He is renowned for his use of a rich color palette, night-scapes, and his colorful stories are unparalleled both on the canvas and off.
The New Sheridan Bar remains much as it was when it opened. The handsomely carved mahogany front bar, wall paneling, room dividers with their spectacular beveled and lead glass panels and many of the ornate light fixtures are among the original appointments. For a brief period early in the 1900’s, the New Sheridan Bar was converted into a grocery store (H.H. Walrod & Co. Grocers) when it became the target of a boycott by local miners during underground labor unrest. The Hotel, Bar and Restaurants were owned at the time by the Sheridan Mines Company. When the labor disputes settled, the old saloon reverted to its proper function and has remained a bar to the present day.
The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
February 24, 1980
Before long, (in the 1890’s) the Sheridan’s American Room became known as one of the best places to dine in Colorado. The owners declared that ‘anything available at the Brown Palace in Denver is available at the Sheridan.’ When one customer teased that the Brown Palace could furnish possum, it took the Sheridan kitchen staff only a few hours to come up with a juicy possum steak…
One dirty spot on the Sheridan’s clean record occurred in the early 1900’s. A gigantic mudslide caused by heavy spring rains (which caused Cornet Falls & Creek to burst) swept through Telluride. Homes were pushed clear off their foundations on fashionable North Oak Street and washed as much as three city blocks straight downhill. The Sheridan’s lobby was filled with mud almost to the eight-foot mark. The slide occurred so fast that supposedly the mud swept away a table in the American Room even as a man sat eating behind it.
The many guests who have frequented the Hotel include such famous celebrities as William Jennings Bryan, Werner Herzog, Jimmy Stewart, Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Bob Dylan, Harrison Ford, Quentin Tarantino, Samuel L Jackson, Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Gere, Daniel Day Lewis, Jodie Foster, Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Peter Bogdanovich, Mickey Rooney, Jimmy Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Chuck Jones, Robert Altman, Keith and Bobby Carradine, Ken Burns, Andy Garcia, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Helen Mirren, Michael Keaton, Peter O’Toole, Laura Linney, Ted Turner, Robert Redford, Joel and Ethan Coen, Francis McDormand, Will Ferrall, Angelina Jolie, Martha Stewart, Val Kilmer, Darryl Hannah, Neil Young, Bryan Cranston, Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
