From Primedia Publications

The Hotel Jerome
Aspen, Colorado

By Susan Bard Hall

Jerome B. Wheeler, founder of the Hotel Jerome, was a Union Civil War hero often cited for courage. But he was busted from colonel to major for disobeying orders and leading “a supply train through Confederate lines to a surrounded and starving Union regiment,” according to Martie Sterling’s The Historical Hotel Jerome, published by the hotel.

After the war, he married Harriet Macy Valentine, niece of New York City department store founder R.H. Macy, and Wheeler became president of Macy’s when his wife’s uncle died. The couple moved to Aspen in 1883, hoping the climate would help restore Mrs. Wheeler’s health—she was probably suffering from tuberculosis.

In Aspen, Wheeler invested heavily in silver mines. The hotel’s history book says he wanted to make sure Aspen wouldn’t be just “another boom and bust silver camp.” With the arrival of the railroad in 1887, silver became even more valuable and the town prospered.

To capitalize on the boom, Wheeler built a hotel “to rival the Ritz in Paris” on a piece of land called Jacob’s Corner. The three-story 90-room Hotel Jerome was constructed in 1889 of red brick and sandstone at a cost of $150,000. Its 15 baths had hot and cold running water, and the hotel boasted one of the first elevators west of the Mississippi River, complete with a hidden maw for steamer trunks. It was also one of the first hotels in the West to be lit by electricity. Rooms could be had for $3 to $4 a night. (Although credited with several “firsts,” the Jerome wasn’t Aspen’s first hotel; that distinction belonged to the Clarendon House, built in 1881 and lost to fire only three years later.)

Wheeler’s hotel had a steam laundry, a barbershop and a hothouse where fresh vegetables for the dining rooms were grown; housewives snapped up the surplus. In the Jerome’s “Ladies’ Ordinary,” unescorted women could have a drink without necessarily raising eyebrows. The Ordinary has long since become part of the legendary Jerome Bar, also called the J-Bar. The hotel quickly took on the “role of social arbiter and business nerve center,” writes Sterling. When the decision-makers at the hotel felt winter was over and it was safe to take down the storm doors, the local newspaper published the date and others followed suit.

But the heyday Wheeler was so convinced would last was shortlived. The bottom fell out of the silver market in 1893 and many of Aspen’s fortunes vanished. Even Wheeler, who was also the founder of Aspen’s first bank, was not immune. He hung on for awhile, but in 1909 he lost the Jerome to back taxes. Mansor Elisha, who’d hired on as a bartender, leased the hotel and bought it two years later for the price of back taxes. It became a boardinghouse, with many of Aspen’s eminent couples calling it home. Elisha ran the Jerome until his death, when his son took over.

In 1945, it was the only hotel in Aspen. Chicago industrialist Walter Paepcke, who turned his father’s modest holdings into the Container Corporation of America, founded the Aspen Company and was an early shareholder of the Aspen Skiing Corporation. The Aspen Company leased the Hotel Jerome from the Elishas, refurbishing it with antiques found throughout the valley.

John Gilmore of Michigan bought the hotel in the late 1960s, but he failed to attract the necessary capital to restore it to its glory days, and demolition loomed. Somehow the Jerome held on, and a group of investors purchased it in 1984 and embarked on a $20 million restoration the following year.

They took off the blue paint above the window arches and the white paint that had covered up the brick and sandstone facade since the early 1900s and restored the interior as well. Some 150 antique lighting fixtures were returned to their original splendor, as well as cast-iron door hinges, copper and brass fire extinguishers and bronze, ceramic and cut-glass doorknobs.

The renovation eliminated the lobby’s colored-glass conservatory, said to cast a flattering light on ladies who eschewed the use of “rouge or lip paint.” A new clear glass roof still gives the lobby the open look of an atrium.

In the old part of the hotel, those 90 original guestrooms evolved into 23, and a four-story addition in 1988 added 70 more, plus a new pool with two attached whirlpools, a patio, a fitness room and a grand ballroom with an adjoining watering hole called the Antler Bar. Each of the 93 guestrooms is individually decorated with period antiques and features modern conveniences such as a mini-bar, two-line telephones, television and VCR, and a luxurious marble bath—some rooms have whirlpool baths. For dinner, there’s the Century Room, the hotel’s formal dining room just off the lobby. Once known as the Silver Queen, it’s decorated in rich burgundy velvet with Italian tapestries and overstuffed Victorian furniture, recalling a time when mine tycoons traded millions in silver over an elegant dinner. Today’s diners can enjoy the unusual, such as roasted loin of elk with barley risotto, roasted winter vegetables and huckleberry sauce scented with anise, or go for the less exotic but still intriguing—sterling salmon with rock shrimp succotash and lemon-thyme reduction—on the hard-to-choose-from menu.

The Jacob’s Corner restaurant serves breakfast and lunch, and on warm days you can eat outside on its deck. The lunch menu features inventive combinations, several with an international touch, such as the grilled vegetable quesadilla with fresh guacamole and pico de gallo and the wild mushroom ravioli with spinach, garlic chips and roasted red pepper-fennel coulis.

As for tours of the hotel, it’s a do-it-yourself proposition. Historical photographs and old mining maps line the walls of Jacob’s Corner and several hallways, so guests often take a self-guided tour at their leisure, Public Relations Manager Sandy Ferlisi says. She suggests visitors make it a point to look at the Western Electric paging system in the lobby. Before in-room telephones, a guest requested service by ringing a bell in his room. At the same time a bell would ring in the lobby and his room number would light up on a board.

Guided walking tours of Aspen, offered by the Aspen Historical Society, often begin or end at the Jerome. (The Aspen Historical Society is housed in what once was the Wheelers’ residence, the Stallard House.) These tours also include the historical West End residential area. Guests also may want to stop by the Wheeler Opera House, built the same year as the Jerome and financed by Wheeler. It burned in 1912, was rebuilt in the late 1940s and completely renovated in the mid-1980s. Music, dance and drama productions are performed year-round.

Check out the Aspen Book Store at the Little Nell or the Explore Booksellers and Bistro on Main Street, a one-block walk from the Jerome. Both carry a selection of books on Aspen, including A History of Aspen by Sally Barlow-Perez. You can also buy a copy of The Historical Hotel Jerome, Sterling’s 33-page book published in 1989 in honor of the hotel’s centennial.

Aspen is known for its boutiques, galleries and people-watching in addition to its world-renowned reputation for snow skiing. The summer months are just as popular for hiking, fishing, whitewater rafting and golfing. Two annual events—the Aspen Music Festival and the Food & Wine Magazine Classic wine festival—also are drawing cards. Ferlisi says many of the Jerome’s guests become so enchanted with Aspen they move here. The Hotel Jerome is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a member of Historic Hotels of America.

The Jerome Bar
When the Jerome Bar opened in 1889, the mining crowd bellied up to its cherrywood bar to celebrate silver strikes. Although the mining boom lasted a mere 10 years, the “J-Bar” has been a central gathering spot ever since. It’s standing-room-only après ski.

Like the mine-camp Victorian decor of the original hotel with its Oriental flourishes, the cherrywood bar is an original Eastlake Anglo-Japanese piece that has been refinished, but the J-Bar’s pressed-tin ceiling is a reproduction.

According to A History of Aspen by Sally Barlow-Perez, during WWII troops of the 10th Mountain Division (renamed from the Army’s 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment) training at Camp Hale traveled the 82 miles to Aspen on a weekend pass. If there were no rooms available, they bivouacked on the lobby floor. After hiking and skiing all day, they made a beeline for the Jerome Bar for a refreshing and lethal drink called the Aspen Crud—a tall milkshake with four shots of 90-proof bourbon.

Although the J-Bar no longer serves Aspen Cruds, popular drinks include “J” margaritas and martinis. The bar opens daily at 11 a.m. and serves casual fare until midnight. The corn chowder with cornbread sticks is a house specialty and just the ticket to take the chill off after a winter’s day of skiing or touring. And for those who can’t seem to get their fill of the slopes, you can always gaze out the bar’s front windows and see breathtaking Aspen Mountain directly ahead.

The Hotel Jerome
330 East Main Street
Aspen, Colorado 81611
(970) 920-1000