The Boulderado has been a downtown Boulder landmark ever since it opened on New Year’s Day, 1909. Aging gracefully, the hotel is as unique as its name — a combination of “Boulder” and “Colorado” — so guests would remember where they had stayed.

The hotel has thrived and survived by changing with the times.

In the early 1900s, Boulder’s frontier-town era had slipped into the past. Buildings of brick and stone ushered in a new era of culture and permanence. The Boulder Commercial Association (forerunner of the Chamber of Commerce), seeking conference space, solicited local businesses to fund a publicly owned company to provide the “comfort of a first-class hotel.”

Business was slow at first, but the end of World War I brought prosperity — not just to the hotel but to Boulder as well. Automobiles, as well as horse-drawn carriages and wagons, pulled up to the hotel’s front door, then located on Spruce Street under a since-collapsed portico.

Room rates ranged from $1 to $3 per day. Guests escaping hot weather in the southern states enjoyed Boulder’s cooler night-time temperatures and often stayed all summer.

Finger bowls and formality awaited both locals and guests in the hotel’s large dining room. Now named Spruce Farm & Fish, the dining room is the oldest continuously open restaurant in Boulder, although the Chautauqua Dining Hall is older.

Beer, wine and liquor, however, were not served, as the city of Boulder had enacted prohibition in 1907 and didn’t lift it until 1967!

The Depression, in the 1930s, cut into the Boulderado’s occupancy. The Boulder Hotel Company, perhaps prudently, sold it in 1940 to a prominent Midwest hotel owner who bought the hotel as a wedding present for his son and wife — Bill and Winnie Hutson.

The bride was a former “Miss Kansas” and had turned down an offer to act in Hollywood to help run the hotel. The Hutsons’ tenure was the first time the hotel was privately owned.

During the World War II years, the Hutsons worked in and remodeled the once-formal dining room. Renamed the Boulderado Coffee Shop, it included a counter and booths. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, its specialties included steak, trout and chicken.

On Nov. 1, 1959, heavy, wet snow cracked a rooftop skylight over the hotel lobby. The snow and glass fell onto two panes of the original stained glass ceiling. Then, the management tore down the entire ceiling and covered it with plexiglass. The hotel became run-down, prompting the then-hotel manager to later comment, “The bloom was off the rose.”

During the 1960s, the Boulderado was an inexpensive place to live. Most hotel guests were permanent tenants who couldn’t afford to go anywhere else. Some cooked their meals on hot plates in their hotel rooms.

Fred Shelton, however, provided an alternative in 1962 when he opened Fred’s Steakhouse (famous for his $2.15 sirloin steak dinners) in the coffee shop/dining room.

When Ed and June Howard purchased the hotel, a newspaper columnist urged his readers to “eat with Fred and sleep with Ed.”

The lobby’s glass ceiling was replaced in the late 1970s. Then, the hotel changed hands and changed hands again. Tenants were moved out and rooms were extensively renovated.

Today, the hotel continues to adapt to the times and has been restored to surpass its former grandeur.

Silvia Pettem’s In Retrospect column appears once a month. She can be reached at silviapettem@gmail.com.