(upbeat melody) - Boarding houses were
the place to stay. - One third of Americans,
at one point or another, in the 19th century lived
in a boarding house. - These strangers
thrown into a house and you see how things
are when people get real. That's what a boarding
house was like. - Operating a boarding house
was one of the first times that a single
woman could have a legitimate type of business. - As the towns grew,
the boarding houses serviced those single
minors that came to town, the men who did not have a
wife to manage their life. (laughs) - Boarding houses are like
barometers, or seismographs; are ways of just measuring
what's happening in the town. - I think that our society
is going to find new ways of that in the 21st century. - From the 19th century up
to the mid-20th century, boarding houses
played an unimaginable
and surprising role in shaping not only
how people lived but how America grew up. - This program was
made possible by the History Colorado
State Historical Fund. - Supporting projects
throughout the state to preserve, protect,
and interpret Colorado's architectural and
archeological treasures. History Colorado
State Historical Fund. Create the future,
honor the past. - With support from the
Denver Public Library, History Colorado, and the Colorado Office of
Film, Television, and Media. With additional support
from these organizations and viewers like you. Thank you. (instrumental music) (banjo music) - Home. What could be closer
to our hearts? During the industrial boom
of 19th century America, home was often transient,
as immigrants, laborers, and families were on the move
or in search of a better life. Boarding houses offered the
simple comforts of home, providing food,
shelter, and community to groups of strangers all
living under the same roof. More than just a fad, boarding houses in the 19th
century were a movement that not only
shaped our nation, but also our very identity. - It's been estimated
that between a third and up to a full half
of American population lived in boarding houses in
the 19th and 20th century. They were a great place
for people who were coming over to
the United States or immigrating through
other parts of the country into new territories. - Many of them, I think,
sorted themselves out as boarding houses for the
poor, for the wealthier people, for people who were
German, or Italian. - Boarding houses
were really popular. So, popular for
a couple reasons. One is, they were generally very, very affordable
places to live. They varied between
being kind of lower end versus really high end and
places in the middle too. - Boarding houses were
kind of like a family home. If you didn't have a
family place to go, you'd knock on a door
of a boarding house and see if you could
rent a room there. And you would indeed usually
be sharing a bathroom, maybe even a
bedroom. (chuckles) - Boarding means you're
getting food and it means that, really, the main thing you're
paying for is that as well. So, your room is important,
the shelter is important but that socializing
aspect of eating together is a part of it. - You think of books
like Little Women, and when Jo goes off
and leaves her family, she moves to Boston, and she stays in a mixed
gendered boarding house. Sherlock Holmes
lives in a really high end London boarding house. (guitar music) - This place where all
these people come together makes for a really
exciting location
where drama can happen, where romance might happen,
where fights might happen. And boarding houses
broke conventional norms in a number of different ways. It was not uncommon to see
boarding houses run by widows whose husbands had died
and women who were single who had the opportunity to
earn a lot more revenue. To have that independence
of home ownership, which was also very rare
in the 19th century. - The on-the-ground keepers
of order were women. And if there was tension,
if there was friction, if there was violence,
it would be a wonderful demonstration of the
authority that women had in settings where we often
think of them as being powerless and subordinate. - I'm sure some boarding
houses were not respectable, they're known as whorehouses, but the boarding houses that
we're talking were respectable and women would be sure to
protect their reputation. And also, if a guest got fresh, you would evict that
kind of a client. Boarding houses, I
think, would accommodate all kinds of people. No doubt there were
boarding houses where gay folks were accepted, where unmarried
couples could go, where a black man
could find a room. - Some people saw them
as a way of eroding those kind of traditional
values where you had a home with a mother and a
father and the children. When you break up that home and you start
inviting strangers, you also can invite in
vice into your home. There's alcohol use,
there's sex or drugs, or anything like that. Some people were
actually very concerned that boarding houses
were actually crumbling America's culture,
but by the same token, it was building all of
these new components and it was facilitating
this move out West. - The great author Walt Whitman
described boarding houses as a kind of melting
pot of America. "Married men and single men, "old men and pretty girls, "milliners and masons, "cobblers, colonels,
and counter-jumpers, "tailors and teachers, "lieutenants, loafers, ladies,
lack-brains, and lawyers, "printers and parsons, "black spirits and white, "blue spirits and gay, "all go out to board." Walt Whitman, 1842. (saloon music) - I would say boarding
houses were everywhere and they were really probably
most common on the East Coast. Initially, it was a phenomenon you could see in
any major city. You would see them then
brought out to the Midwest, and out to the farther West, out to the West Coast as well. - Boarding houses would
proliferate during the busts. When people couldn't
afford their own homes and big, old mansions were
broken up into boarding houses. And people struggling
with the Great Depression would rent out rooms to anyone. And there were plenty
of people, needy folks, that needed cheap housing. - The boarding house
might begin as a place where working minors stayed. As that economy shifts along,
as the mine might shut down, there might be a
dark period where there's not much
economic activity. And there's a shift of
who's staying in those rooms that really reflects
what is happening to the broader community
and to the broader economy. - Boarding houses proliferated
in Colorado's mountain towns during the gold rush
and silver booms of the mid to late 1800s,
accommodating prospectors and helping to tame
the American West. - For people to have
what they needed to have, in order to live in
western locations, without the boarding
house there's a much, much, much more
sparse population. - So, at this
point in the 1850s, there is an influx of people
who are coming through Denver into Golden specifically
because they want to get up into the gold
fields and later to the silver fields. Golden in the 1860s is
a really booming place and very transitory. So, boarding houses start
popping up all over. - Nestled at the base
of the Rocky Mountains, the Astor House was
one of the largest and most luxurious boarding
houses in Golden at the time. - The Astor House was
built in 1867 by a man, his name was Seth Lake. Seth came to Colorado in the
1860s on a covered wagon. He brought his whole
family out here. - He opens it as a
hotel but it soon becomes a boarding house. It was name for the famous
Astor House in New York City, I guess the grandest
hotel there built
by John Jacob Astor. The Astor House is made
of locally quarried stone, then they whitewashed
it on the outside. - Having a real stone
hotel really showed some permanence to the town. It was a little bit
of an opulent thing to have out in
Colorado as well. One of the reasons why
Astor House was located where it was and
was built so well, was that Golden was still
the territorial capital of Colorado at the time
and there was high hopes that it would become
the state capital. - So, that would be the
ideal accommodations for the legislators
meeting there for territorial legislature. The problem was, he doesn't
get the hotel finished until 1867 and that's
the year they moved the territorial
capital back to Denver. - Somehow, the Astor
House continued to survive despite the lack of a
capital with legislators commuting in and out. And without the sales of
something quite lucrative, booze. - Seth Lake was a deacon
with the Baptist church and we know that he preached
temperance as part of his values and we believe
that he did not actually sell alcohol there, which
really must have took a bite out of his revenue. Seth Lake owns the Astor
House for over 20 years. During the 1880s and
1890s, the building is switching hands so many times. It finally ends up
almost $2,000 of debt and it sits empty unknowing
what it's fate might become. - Woman named Ida
Goetz moves in, but Mother Goetz
she was called. She was a German immigrant. - She was sort of
small and mighty. She was not very
tall in stature. Everyone knew her from
her German accent. - Ida had married Henry Goetz,
a well-known tavern keeper. They were living in
Georgetown, Colorado when life changed dramatically. Henry died of a stroke in 1891, leaving Ida a widow
with two children. - She moves to Golden
and she gets a loan from some of her friends, buys the Astor House in 1892, which is available
then on back taxes. She gets it for about $2,000. She opens up and she
moves her two sons in and they start a
boarding house. She makes a lot of
renovations to the space. She builds a kitchen and adds a huge addition to the building with electricity,
with plumbing. - She was famous
for her cooking. And that would, of course,
would be another hallmark. You'd want a boarding house
with a good cook in it. - So, she's making
a lot of money off the food that she makes. We know that people would come
there and pay about 25 cents and you could have a hot bath. And Astor House is
one of the first indoor heated
plumbing in the area. She's very, very
savvy with how she can make some additional money. - Ida even saw opportunity
in the midst of disaster. - Fires are the bane of
any 19th century town, especially on the frontier. Which we know at
least three fires happened at the Astor House. One in 1908 started
on the second floor, and then just completely
gutted the building. She took the opportunity
to reconfigure the floor, to add a few more rooms
to the second floor, and then she converted
her attic into three additional small
rooms which were used almost as dormitories. Because the Astor
House was in Golden, which was a university town with the Colorado
School of Mines, oftentimes she would have
young men staying with her and they would call
her Mother Goetz and she very much
treated them like family. She was a very warm person. I think people
really had a lot of admiration for her in town. Ida operates it daily
until about 1915, and then Oscar, her son,
and his wife, Irene Goetz, take over the daily
operations beginning in 1915; all the way up
til the mid-1950s. Astor House in the 1960s
was looking really rough. It was in bad condition. It had lots of problems with
its roof, its foundation. As an effort to
pull down blight, many older buildings
like Astor House were slated for demolition. - The fate of the Astor House
launched a local movement and survival or
destruction would come down to one crucial vote. Just 35 miles west of Golden, the Peck House was a
refuge for many minors hoping to strike it rich. When gold was discovered
in Empire in 1860, people started
flocking to the region. - It's in a little
network of towns where the mining rushes
had brought in populations. And some people
who had succeeded. And there's homes built. Boosters and merchants and
people who see opportunity. - There was also a stage stop and many people would
stop there for a meal or perhaps decide this
is a nice place to live and move in there and do their
mining out of the Peck House. - The Peck family
were pioneers. Mr. Peck was 60 years
old when he came out. He was a very successful
businessman in Chicago. They heard there
was gold fields. He decided, he thought he'd
take a shot at coming out and seeing what he could do. - James Peck staked
several claims in Empire. One which became
the most developed gold mine in the district. He not only saw
profits in the gold, but in the miners as well. - James Peck built what's now
the oldest hotel in Colorado. By 1864, it's also
a boarding house. He and his family lived there and they started
taking in boarders. The Peck House was
made of local lumber. It was sawed there in Empire, so it was very well built. It's held up very
well to this day. - And these were people
who knew how to build, how to make things. Mrs. Peck was very
famous for saying, "A woman has to do what
a woman has to do." And it was hard, it
was hard on women. She did all the
cooking, you know. She was famous for her cooking. - The Peck House has
a wonderful balcony and porch looking out
over the valley there. And on that porch he'd
fastened this great big brass ship's bell which he
would ring for dinner time, or lunch time. - Business at the Peck House
was so booming in 1864, that James Peck built a
second story addition, nearly doubling the
size of the house. By the late 1860s, a silver
boom in nearby Georgetown lured business away,
leaving the Peck family facing hard times. - In Colorado you have
this boom and bust economy, and many, many of these
boarding houses might go up for taxes where you
couldn't pay your taxes and someone else would buy it. Peck actually
gotten into trouble. He managed to buy it back
thanks to his mining income. - So that whole mining region, Empire and Georgetown
area, that's gonna ride the roller coaster of
the mining economy. - By 1881, the Peck
House had become the social center of Empire and the first residence
to have a telephone and electric lights. - I actually honeymooned there and had a great banquet there. They have a great glass
window and an open porch looking out over Clear Creek
and the Town of Empire. - At the turn of
the 20th century, the Peck House was leased
to numerous tenants but remained owned by the
Peck family for over 80 years. After enduring years
of decline and neglect, it was finally revived
as the Hotel Splendide in 1958 by two
enterprising women. One who was the
granddaughter of legendary Colorado brewer, Adolph Coors. - The Peck house reminds us
how a commercial enterprise originates from a spirit of
hospitality and kindness. Strangers meeting and
finding a place to pause and to feel that
they are at rest in every sense of that. That's what the Peck House
seemed to be offering a lot of people in
its different stages. (guitar music) - Like Empire, Aspen,
Colorado was at the center of a booming mining
operation that lured not only miners
but entrepreneurs. Hotel Jerome was
born from a vision to bring the
refinement of Europe to this mini metropolis
in the Rockies. Opened in 1889,
during the height of
Colorado's silver boom, the Jerome offered
such rare amenities as a barber shop and
a grand ballroom. Over it's illustrious
130 year history, Hotel Jerome has always been
one of Aspen's major landmarks. But it almost didn't happen. - There's evidence
of litigation going on between contractors,
people weren't getting paid. We don't know what
that letter said but those developers
disappeared overnight and left the
project incomplete. - Luckily, one of the
investors would not let the hotel fail
and it was his name that would be carried
into Colorado history. - This was Jerome B. Wheeler, a very wealthy man who'd
married in the Macy's family of Macy's department
store fame. And they came to Aspen
with a lot of money and built this great
hotel there named for him. - Mr. Wheeler is, we
jokingly call him, our rich uncle here in town. Not a founding father
but a strong investor. He had invested in our
only smelting plant, one of two railroads,
he had built a bank, and given the city
an opera house. He couldn't let this
project not be complete. Because of the
success of Aspen, this had to get finished or
it would've been a black mark. So, he funds the
completion of the hotel. And the hotel opened
on November 27, 1889. So, they built a four
story, three floor, 92 room, 15 bathrooms, servicing
those 92 guest rooms, brick hotel in
less than a year. - It had marble floors. It had oak furnishings. It had this very elegant
J-Bar which is still there and a big very spacious lobby. - Here in the middle
of the Rocky Mountains, in the middle of
an industrial city, was this European fine hotel. The newspapers once wrote that, "You could sit and have
your whiskers trimmed "in the barber shop sipping
on fine European brandy, "awaiting your dinner to be
prepared by the French chef, "to be then followed by your
dance lesson in the ballroom." All within the
confines of the hotel. - Aspen was a great
silver mining town which goes from boom
to bust very rapidly and Jerome Wheeler
goes bankrupt. He loses the hotel
to a tax sale. - Then over the course
of the next decade, until about 1903, it
changed hands a lot. This hotel was kept open,
the city paid the utilities, and a gentleman by the
name of Mansor Elisha began to operate the hotel. By 1911, Mansor
had saved up $3,000 and he bought this
hotel for back taxes. - He turns it into
a boarding house, lives there with his family, and also starts
renting out rooms. And half of Aspen
who could no longer afford their own homes,
move in to the Hotel Jerome. - It was cheaper in the
1920s to come live here then buy coal to
heat your own home. So, families began
to come and live here at the Hotel Jerome
through the winter months. - But all the way through,
even through prohibition, you could drink Aspen crud, as
they called it at the J-Bar; where they'd but
whiskey in a milkshake and serve that to you. - Following World War II,
Hotel Jerome was renovated and brought back to
it's Victorian grandeur by industrialist Walter Paepcke. (instrumental music) Before Aspen would become
a world class ski resort, Paepke promoted this
quaint mountain town as a haven to replenish
the mind, body, and soul. - Paepcke is a very
distinctive person, and he comes from Chicago,
and he sees opportunities, and meaning, and
magic in Aspen. So, with the Paepcke
renaissance that leads to Aspen becoming a center of
thought and cultural vitality, Hotel Jerome gets a different
lease on life from that. - It was a boarding house
through the 60s and the 70s, well on up into the 1980s. - The Hotel Jerome,
unlike many of these, never ever closed, ever
since it opened in 1889, despite all the
hard times in Aspen. It's always survived. (guitar music) - Today, Hotel Jerome is
the iconic symbol of Aspen, in part by maintaining
it's Victorian roots, through it's many chapters
in Aspen's history. - The hotel was
renovated in 1985. More European
visitors were coming to visit Aspen as a ski resort. So, it had kind of changed
from rustic western into more high class, and
this hotel was the first four star hotel
servicing that clientele in a Victorian style. - We came here
on our honeymoon. We bought our
honeymoon cottage. (laughing) - Gary and Sally St. Clair
purchased the Peck House in 1981 and have carried
on the legacy of operating this historic hotel
for over 30 years. - We tried to make the
Peck House what Mrs. Peck would have been proud of. It's sort of a time warp. The Peck House still looks
like the pictures in 1862. - In 1970, a local group,
a local downtown authority, purchased the Astor
House with the intention of demolishing it and
creating a parking lot there. The action galvanized a group
of local preservationists and they started a grassroots
preservation movement. The City of Golden took
a popular vote in 1970 and the people of
Golden elected to buy the Astor House
and preserve it, and a few years later,
it served as a museum. - Astor House no longer
serves as a museum, but the City of Golden is
committed to its preservation and finding sustainable,
appropriate uses for one of the communities
great treasures. - So, the Astor House
is one lucky building to be in a community
that's really asking some significant, deep thoughts
about who they are in the present and how they
originate from history. (piano music) - Boarding houses
in the United States really, I think, follow a trend
with taste and technology. One is, after World War
II, Americans come back and it becomes a much
more prosperous time in the United States
and people start having their own vehicle. People want privacy
and they want the ability to get
around the country. And that's when hotels and
motels become really popular, in the 1950s. And that's when you start
to see boarding houses really falling out of favor. - I think the boarding house
was a wonderful institution particularly for
lonely, solitary people who wanted a family. You would be adopted
into a boarding house. You'd have company there,
you'd have companionship. - I think the legacy
of boarding houses is that desire for shared living. In the 21st century, where we are
increasing isolated, people are searching
for new ways to live together, to
commune together. - While boarding
houses are rare today, shared living spaces
are making a comeback. - In some ways
it's by necessity. We live in a society where
things are very expensive, where huge amounts of our
salary are going towards our rent or to our mortgages. People are looking in
that and questioning that, if that's what they really
want for themselves anymore. - You look at Airbnb, it's
basically boarding houses, it's guest houses, whether
people are there or not 'cause you can share an
apartment with someone. - So, we might think
sentimentally about
a boarding house. People do have a
sense of a family, a surrogate family,
a community. We are really more because
we were brought together. And the sentimentality
around that should be in our picture when
we think about what moved the people in
the 19th century West and formed part
of their identity. (instrumental music)
