Why do we have a historic preservation program, if not to protect places like the Harvest House Hotel? Sadly, the city’s historic preservation staff approved a full demolition of the hotel — an award-winning mid-century modern building that is also the site of pivotal social history.

Ralph D. Peterson architects designed a bold, curved hotel that embraced the setting on Boulder Creek and allowed for a spectacular view of the Flatirons. The hotel helped Boulder become a world center for science with rooms for meetings and conferences. Prominent scientists stayed at the hotel every week, beginning in 1959.

We celebrated cultural milestones at the hotel, like the national press conference for hometown hero Scott Carpenter’s NASA mission in 1962.

In the late 1970s, the Friday Afternoon Club in Anthony’s Gardens made the Harvest House the social center for a generation.

By supporting causes, including providing space for alternative radio station KGNU, hosting the Chocolate Lovers’ Fling benefit for Safehouse, and establishing the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame, the Harvest House earned a reputation for being a generous community partner.

The Harvest House expanded, as intended from the beginning, and grew into a recreation paradise for tennis, swimming, Frisbee and volleyball. Management supported the Boulder Creek Path for joggers, cyclists and skaters, that passed through the hotel’s backyard. The 1985 printed materials for the new path referred to the hotel as a landmark.

But the Harvest House is so run down.

So was the Hotel Boulderado. In the late 1950s, the Boulderado was dirty and in disrepair. Some long-term tenants cooked on hotplates in their rooms, and later transients would sneak into the hotel to bathe and sleep. Today, the restored Boulderado is a jewel of downtown.

Experts say the Harvest House isn’t eligible for landmarking.

Yes, but developers paid for those experts. Cultural Resource Historians, LLC was hired by Landmark Properties, Inc. to “write the obituary” of the Harvest House, as the lead author admitted. With multiple single-spaced pages recounting the hotel’s unique architecture and unmatched history, CRH then concluded that the hotel was not eligible for national, state or local landmarking.

Read the report here: tinyurl.com/2p828u9b

The Modernism Survey says the hotel was modified.

Preservation program staff referenced “Historic Context and Survey of Modern Architecture in Boulder, 1947-1977,” stating that the survey indicated the hotel was significantly modified and not eligible for landmark designation. In fact, survey authors evaluated the Harvest House as a complex that included the adjacent apartments and shopping center (page 13). Except to say that the hotel was “crudely resurfaced,” the survey did not address the hotel independently, although the hotel had its own architect and a completely separate social history. Even so, the survey’s recommendations were that the Harvest House complex “should be identified in city planning files for historic preservation in any such re-development plans” (page 100).

Read the survey here: tinyurl.com/yc8ckxpd

Other buildings have been preserved, despite alterations. The Hotel Boulderado had two additions when it was placed on the National Register in 1994. Marpa House had multiple remodels when approved as a landmark in 2020.

We need housing.

The Harvest House redevelopment will not create housing for Boulder’s workforce or families. The multiple new buildings will house some of CU’s ever-growing enrollment of more than 36,000 students.

Walk the sustainability talk, Boulder.

Talk about good bones! The hotel’s steel framing is strong and its numerous sandstone walls (from local quarries) look as good as new.

As former City Councilmember Dan Corson stated, “I fail to see how it is sustainable to demolish a building of many rooms with bathrooms to build a new building of many rooms with bathrooms.”

Richard Moe, former president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, explained in a New York Times article that “it could take 50 years or more for even a highly efficient building to save as much energy as is expended in the demolition and construction processes.”

Historic places are part of our shared identity, as they help us understand the past and appreciate our culture. It will be a shameful day when the Harvest House goes down next spring. Should Boulder still be considered a leader in preservation and/or sustainability?

Carol Taylor lives in Boulder. Read her narrative, “The Rise and Fall of Boulder’s Legendary Harvest House Hotel,” at www.carolellentaylor.com.