COLORADO SPRINGS — To call The Broadmoor a hotel is like calling the Taj Mahal a building. The swank landmark resort, owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, is an experience to be savored, as you would a first-rate aged brandy — rich, sweet, complex.
The Broadmoor, which will mark its centennial June 29, emanates old world elegance with its pink-stucco Italianate Renaissance buildings ringing 10-acre Cheyenne Lake at the foot of craggy Cheyenne Mountain. It has received Forbes Travel Guide’s Five-Star and AAA Five-Diamond ratings each year for decades — ever since they’ve been handed out.
Visitors could easily imagine they are at Lake Lucerne in Switzerland or Lake Como in Italy. But they are in Colorado’s second-largest city, a little more than an hour’s drive from Denver and almost 1,000 feet higher.
Coloradans can thank Spencer and Julie Penrose for the gift of this spectacular place.
The fourth of six brothers from a prominent Philadelphia family, Spencer moved West after graduating last in his class at Harvard in 1886. Eventually ending up in Colorado in 1892, he hooked up with boyhood friend Charles Tutt and the two became successful partners in gold mines, real estate and milling interests in Cripple Creek and Colorado City. But they made even more money with copper milling in Utah. By 1936, Spencer’s Utah Copper Co., founded in 1903, was sold to Kennecott Copper Co.
And Spencer Penrose made a fortune.
Julie, the sixth of eight children from a wealthy Detroit family, moved to curative Colorado Springs in 1900 with her first husband, who had tuberculosis. He died a year later. Julie stayed in the adopted city she loved and became involved in the arts and music. She met confirmed bachelor Spencer at a clambake and, over time, they attended social events together.
Spencer was beginning to fall for Julie, so decided to run away to Europe to clear his head. He left New York on a ship crossing the Atlantic in February 1906. Julie just “happened” to be on the same ship with a friend and Julie’s daughter Gladys, who presumably would be enrolling in a school in Switzerland. Spencer accompanied the three to the French Riviera for a month. His and Julie’s romance blossomed and they were married in London in April 1906.
Over the years, Spencer and Julie traveled the world and indulged in the finer things of life — good food, good wine, good art. And good hotels.
They became interested in tourism and wanted to build something in Colorado equivalent to the places they stayed when they were abroad. They wanted to promote this area in the shadow of Pikes Peak — “America’s Mountain” — where Katharine Lee Bates was inspired to pen a poem that became “America the Beautiful.”
FUN FACT: Penrose completed the first automobile road to the summit of Pikes Peak in 1915 for $250,000 and, the next year, sponsored the inaugural “Race to the Clouds,” one of his earliest efforts at promoting tourism. Now known as The Broadmoor Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, it is the second-oldest U.S. auto race after the Indianapolis 500.
Who would ever know that The Broadmoor is 100? The grande dame is no doddering dowager. The spirited sovereign of the Rockies gleams more than ever. Romance radiates. No detail is overlooked, like the eye-popping arrangement of red roses that greets you when you walk into a lobby. (And, in case you’re curious, they’re changed weekly.)
The latest Broadmoor project just completed is Café Julie’s, a Parisian-style patisserie café off the Main building’s lobby, with coffee, wine, beer, salads and sandwiches, plus a display kitchen where you can watch chocolates being made. The larger and classier café, with expanded seating, takes the place of Espresso News, which often was overcrowded.
Much has been written about The Broadmoor and, in particular, about its flamboyant, visionary founder, Spencer Penrose. Most of the stories are true.
Penrose decided to build The Broadmoor after his offer to buy The Antlers Hotel in downtown Colorado Springs was turned down. He and another partner, Charles MacNeill, paid $90,000 for the 40-acre Broadmoor Casino and Hotel southwest of the city, which also included Cheyenne Lake, plus an adjoining 400 acres. They sold $1 million in stock to other partners and began to build Penrose’s dream hotel — “the European alternative” — in what was considered the Western wilderness.
FUN FACT: Penrose designed the hotel’s logo with a raised uppercase A in Broadmoor. A myth is that the A was a dig at The Antlers to signify that The Broadmoor was above the downtown hotel that refused his offer. Factually, the Broadmoor name was already used in the area and raising the A gave Penrose copyright privileges.
Spencer Penrose wanted to impress his East Coast friends. He hired Warren & Wetmore, the architectural firm that had just completed New York’s Grand Central Station, to design the hotel, and the Frederick Law Olmstead firm, renowned for designing New York’s Central Park, to lay out the grounds.
Artisans arrived from Europe and elsewhere to paint frescoes on vaulted ceilings and wooden beams; create bas-relief, della Robbia-style tiles; and carve fountains and a curved staircase from marble.
The 350-seat Little Theater off the lobby was Julie’s inspiration for plays, films and musical concerts. Virtuosos such as Igor Stravinsky, Vladimir Horowitz and Sergei Rachmaninoff performed there. The theater is still used to show full-length films nightly for resort guests.
Penrose also hired revered golf course architect Donald Ross to design The Broadmoor’s 18-hole championship course. Its first tournament was on July 4, 1918, a fundraiser for the Red Cross, about a week after the hotel debuted. (A second 18-hole championship course was completed in 1964.)
The Penroses held a VIP pre-opening party for 200 of their closest friends on June 1, 1918, four weeks before the official opening. They wanted to show off the 350-room hotel, which cost about $3 million to build and furnish. The formal opening drew 1,000 guests for dinner and dancing, including John D. Rockefeller Jr., the first of a roster of celebrities, royalty and heads of state who have stayed at the resort over the years. (Rockefeller, however, was bothered by paint fumes and moved to the rival Antlers Hotel to sleep for the night.)
FUN FACT: The Broadmoor boasted an early-day spa behind the front desk with therapeutic baths and steam rooms. A 100,000-gallon indoor swimming pool at the south end was said to be “the largest in the West.” It used mountain spring water that was purified. The now-empty blue and white ceramic tile pool, which closed in 1961, endures in the hotel’s “spooky” basement under the floor of the Signature Shop, closed off by a door.
Penrose threw another party two years later for 60 of America’s top hoteliers. He wanted other innkeepers to recognize that he had a grand hotel in the middle of nowhere.
Prohibition was in full swing so he told the men to each bring five bottles of their favorite “cologne” — his euphemism for alcohol. He hired a private train that left for Colorado Springs from New York’s Grand Central Station.
Once the hoteliers arrived at The Broadmoor, Penrose wined and dined them. He entertained them with Native American dancers he brought in, biplane races to Denver, polo matches, golf games and automobile races up Pikes Peak in his fleet of Pierce-Arrows. Newspaper clippings about the two-week party still line the walls outside the popular Hotel Bar on Broadmoor Main’s mezzanine level.
The next year, 1921, the hoteliers feted Penrose in New York. They acclaimed him “a prince of entertainers and a bon vivant of rare accomplishments.”
FUN FACT: Three murals in the hotel bar spoof the hoteliers’ outings. In one, Penrose is represented — Doonesbury style — as a flask and a 10-gallon hat on the back seat of his Pierce-Arrow. Another mural shows a monkey playing with what appears to be a golf ball. But look closer: It’s a glass eye. Penrose, who lost his left eye in a boating accident, had two glass eyes — one that was clear and one with bloodshot streaks to match his right eye when he had been drinking.
Ever the clever showman, Penrose used animals — including a bear — to help attract guests to The Broadmoor.
He had a collection of exotic animals, some of which were kept at his nearby ranch and some in cages on The Broadmoor grounds, where the south building is now located.
A pet elephant, Tessie (named after a prostitute in a Cripple Creek mining camp), made numerous appearances around town, giving rides to children, and once caddied for Penrose and boxer Jack Dempsey on The Broadmoor golf course. Penrose also used a llama to pull him in a cart as he campaigned against Prohibition.
When his conglomeration became too numerous and too noisy, Penrose relocated the animals to the side of Cheyenne Mountain and established the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, now one of Colorado Springs’ major attractions. America’s only mountain zoo, at 6,800 feet, it has more than 750 animals. (Farther up Cheyenne Mountain at 8,000 feet, he built the pink granite Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun, where he and Julie are buried in a lower-level chapel.)
Animals still have a special place at The Broadmoor, which allows guests to stay with a maximum of two pets. Pitty Pat Club pet parades — named in honor of Julie’s beloved black poodle — are held around Cheyenne Lake. (Julie willed Pitty Pat, her constant companion, to her caretaker when she died in 1956 at age 85.)
FUN FACT: People travel with odd pets, The Broadmoor has found. In addition to dogs (75 pound limit) and cats, “best friends in residence” have included ducks, pot-bellied pigs and snakes.
The Broadmoor had motor-powered boats and rowboats when it opened for guests to take excursions on Cheyenne Lake. Three beaches were added in the early 1920s: one on the north end for guests, one on the south end for the public, and an island in the lake for employees. There also was fishing, swimming and ice skating on the lake and, later, water skiing, AAU swim meets and even a Miss Broadmoor bathing beauty contest.
Now, guests can rent paddle boats or electric canopy boats to float on the water. They also can stroll along a ¾-mile concrete path that circles the lake, whose undoubtedly happy inhabitants include some 3,000 fish, plus geese, ducks, turtles and white swans. Cassie, a border collie/lab on “poop patrol,” chases geese off the grounds and into the water to keep the walkway clear.
The lake was drained in 2001 when an 11,000-square-foot infinity-edge swimming pool was installed in the north end. Wildlife officials moved the fish and water fowl to temporary quarters until the lake was refilled.
No bodies were found at the bottom of the lake — at least then (see below) — but there were lawn chairs, ice skates, umbrellas and a motorcycle.
FATAL FACT: Three people have drowned in the 16-foot-deep lake: a woman with tuberculosis who, in 1924, walked fully clothed into the lake on her own and who some have seen in a white dress still making visits; a man (not staying at the resort) who tried to swim across the lake in the early hours of the morning about three years ago; and a 44-year-old hotel guest about 20 years ago, whose body surfaced on April Fool’s Day with a high blood-alcohol content.
Penrose wanted things for guests to do at his Broadmoor. Interested in athletics, he kept changing things up. He built a riding arena in 1930 for various equestrian events, and a $1 million, 10,000-seat, horseshoe-shaped stadium in 1938, which became home of the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo, Colorado Springs’ second-oldest event after the Hill Climb. The stadium was moved in 1974 to make room for the Broadmoor’s West building and now is the Norris-Penrose Event Center in Colorado Springs.
After Penrose saw Norwegian figure-skating star Sonja Henie perform, he decided to convert the riding academy to The Broadmoor Ice Palace (later renamed Broadmoor World Arena), which opened in January 1938. It cost $200,000 and required 100 tons of ice to cover the 185-by-85-foot surface.
The Broadmoor Skating Club presented ice shows for conventions being held at the resort, as well as summer ice revues and winter ice shows. “Pops on Ice” Christmas extravaganzas began in 1977 with the Colorado Springs Symphony and none other than guest conductor Arthur Fiedler of Boston Pops fame.
Before it was razed in April 1994 for resort expansion, the arena was the training ground for World Figure Skating Champion Jill Trenery (1990) and Olympic gold medalists Hayes Alan Jenkins (1956), his brother David Jenkins (1960), and Peggy Fleming (1968).
It also was the home of the Colorado College Tigers hockey team and the site of the first NCAA Hockey Championships in 1948, an event the arena hosted for 10 consecutive years. The Broadmoor also was instrumental in bringing the Russian hockey team to the U.S. in 1959 at the height of the Cold War.
TRAGIC FACT: A marble bench in the shape of an ice skate blade near the site of the old arena pays tribute to eight members of The Broadmoor Skating Club, including their coach Edi Scholdan, who were killed on Feb. 15, 1961, in an airplane crash near Brussels. They were traveling with the U.S. Figure Skating Team to the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague. All 72 passengers died.
Penrose, an avid drinker, stocked up on fine wine and liquor in anticipation of Congress ratifying the 18th Amendment, which prohibited making, transporting or selling intoxicating liquors. He installed secret doors behind bookcases leading to a locked wine cellar in the Spanish-style villa near The Broadmoor where he and Julie lived.
He evidently forgot about an underground stash of wine and spirits behind a padlocked door beneath the old north-end outdoor swimming pool. Fumes were overwhelming when the fermented booze was discovered more than 60 years later.
When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Penrose paid homage by opening The Broadmoor’s Tavern restaurant, now La Taverne, off the lobby in the main building. For lighting, he designed chandeliers and wall sconces from some of his empty wine bottles. And he created Bottle Alley along a hallway outside La Taverne, a display behind glass cases of more than 1,000 dusty, mostly-empty bottles of premium liquors and wines — most of which Penrose collected and consumed during Prohibition.
When the main building closed in October 2001 for extensive renovation, workers numbered the antique bottles and removed them one by one. Seven months later when Main reopened, the bottles were returned to their exact positions, dust and all.
FUN FACT: George W. Bush had his last (presumably) drink of alcohol at The Broadmoor in July 1986 after a “wild drunken weekend” celebrating his 40th birthday with friends from Texas. The Broadmoor didn’t admit to the raucous incident until years later after Bush himself divulged details openly.
Spencer and Julie Penrose launched another legacy in 1937 when they established the non-profit El Pomar Foundation with an initial gift of $21 million. The foundation, today with $601 million in assets, became The Broadmoor’s owner after Spencer’s death in 1939 at age 74, and ran the resort for nearly 50 years.
When tax laws changed, prohibiting charitable organizations from owning more than 50 percent of a private business, El Pomar sold controlling interest in The Broadmoor in 1988 and the remaining interest in 2004 to Grand Ole Opry/Opryland/Oklahoma City newspaper mogul Edward L. Gaylord.
Anschutz purchased The Broadmoor in 2011 — only the fourth owner in the resort’s celebrated history. He made a reported billion-dollar deal with the Gaylord family for all assets of its Oklahoma Publishing Co., which also included the Oklahoman newspaper and more than 100 original pieces of Western art, adding to Anschutz’s already impressive collection.
Anschutz has spent an estimated $600 million in Broadmoor renovations and expansions since his purchase. The Broadmoor campus and its outlying wilderness mountain properties — The Ranch at Emerald Valley, Cloud Camp and Fly Fishing Camp — encompass 5,000 acres and consist of 784 rooms, suites and cottages.
FUN FACT: In a foreward in “The Broadmoor Story,” a recently published book timed to the resort’s centennial, Anschutz said he started coming to The Broadmoor when he was 5. “By the age of 10 I had told my parents I was going to buy the hotel.”
It takes more than a couple of breaths to rattle off all that The Broadmoor has to offer. If you can’t find something to do at The Broadmoor that charges your battery, you won’t find it anywhere. Put it on your bucket list if you haven’t stayed there.
The Broadmoor certainly lives up to Spencer Penrose’s 1918 billing as “the permanent and perfect” hotel. How could it get any better? Hard to figure.
But this being The Broadmoor — and with Julie and Spencer Penrose overlooking the resort from their shrine — someone, no doubt, will think of something.
The Broadmoor, 1 Lake Ave., Colorado Springs; www.broadmoor.com. Room rates from $525 in summer and $325 in winter for classic accommodations. Check website, as rates vary. Some good deals can be found in wintertime, particularly around the holidays. Larger accommodations include the five-bedroom, 12,000-square-foot Estate House ($8,500 in summer, $5,500 in winter); the three-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot Penrose Suite ($3,735 in summer, $3,540 in winter); and the two-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot West Tower Gaylord Suite ($2,740 in summer, $2,445 in winter).
Centennial packages are good through December, and include a copy of “The Broadmoor Story” history book, sparkling wine and a candy nut tin at turndown on the first night, $60 breakfast credit per night, and 25 percent off published rates for suites. Rates start at $325 per person June-October and $190 per person November-December.
Diners have a choice of 10 restaurants, including the Penrose Room, Colorado’s only Forbes Five-Star, AAA Five-Diamond restaurant, plus 10 additional cafés and lounges; Sunday brunch, 9 a.m.-1:30 p.m. in the Lake Terrace Dining Room, is an extravaganza, with more than 150 items, $52 for ages 11 and older, $17 for children 10 and under; and there’s even more to sample at holiday brunches on Easter, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, $75 adults, $24 children; reservations are essential.
In honor of its centennial year, The Broadmoor has had special events of sorts each month since January. But, mostly, they have had only activities for resort guests each month designed to highlight the history, such as history tours of the property.
Since the actual June 29 centennial date falls during the U.S. Senior Open, they plan only fireworks (weather permitting) to celebrate. They also have a Nashville Comes to The Broadmoor concert on June 25 featuring Vince Gill and Amy Grant to benefit Challenge America, which supports veterans and their families. The concert is open to the public, and a limited number of tickets are still available, starting at $125. Call 855-634-7711.
