Our History

The Story
Initially opened for business on January 31, 1925, the modern, “up-to-the-minute” hotel, named the Hotel Berrimoor after its owner Robert Berry, was the pride of Golden. Golden resident, Mrs. T.G. Garrison, as part of a contest that drew more than 80 entries, submitted the name. It was coined from the owner’s name and the building’s architectural style. The Spanish style of the original hotel is a derivation of that of the Moors, natives of Morocco, on the North African coast. Centuries ago, the Moors invaded Spain and built extensively there. The Spaniards adopted the architecture and labeled it “Spanish.” Later it was carried to Old Mexico and California and eventually spread through the United States with architects elaborating on the style. The hotel took on another style in subsequent renovations but has come back to its Spanish roots with the elegant Southwestern style of the Table Mountain Inn. Hotel Berrimoor, a two-story building featuring wide arched doorways with similar windows above, was constructed of brick mined and made in Golden. The first floor had a registration desk, lunch counter, and cafeteria, banquet hall and kitchen. Twenty-two guestrooms occupied the second floor, accessible by a spiral staircase in the same location as today. All had modern furnishings and sinks and most had private baths. Instead of a first-floor lobby, the second floor had a large area for guests to gather, appointed with a fireplace, piano, and comfortable furniture. Tracy Quick, son of Herbert Tracy Quick, who built the Hall of Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines in 1894, designed the building. It cost $64,000 to build.

Hard Times
The Hotel Berrimoor failed during the Great Depression but reopened in the 1930’s for a few years as the Cody Hotel. Its new lessors, Mr. and Mrs. Edgar P. Sparks, were successful proprietors of the Hillcrest Inn at Mt. Morrison. They named their Golden inn after Col. William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who is buried on Lookout Mountain, and had a sign made with the hotel name set in neon against a huge cowboy hat. During the 1930’s and 1940’s the hotel changed owners and names a few more times. In 1946, alterations included a renovation of the first floor to art deco style, and a new single story north wing, which housed the new El Burro Grill, claiming “Packs of Good Food” in neon lights.

The Holland House
When Lu Holland bought the hotel in 1948, it began its longest reign under one name. Holland transformed the hostelry to a setting fitting for the old west and renamed it the Holland House. He added two wings, one on the south side and one on the rear of the hotel for banquet rooms. The new rooms were the site of many social events in the hotel’s many years as the Holland House. The south banquet room, then called the Pioneer Room, featured a Hal Shelton mural called “The Birth of Golden in 1858″ which now hangs inside Golden’s Foss Drugstore. Holland was a longtime Golden businessman and civic leader and one-time mayor of the city. In 1957 he spearheaded the campaign to build the welcome arch across Washington Avenue. Originally, it read “Where the West Remains,” in gold rustic letters in the popular neon.
The old west décor bowed to modern style in 1963 as Holland converted the hotel to Golden’s first motor inn. The historic First Methodist Church next door to the south was moving to new quarters. The Gothic style church, the second Protestant congregation in Colorado, had stood on the corner from 1868 to 1963. The church and two parsonages were demolished, providing parking for the motor inn. The church’s educational building was retained and added to the hotel, but was apparently not converted fully to hotel use until many years later. Along with the addition of the church property and building, the hotel was once again renovated and featured a wavy canopy over the front entrance with a new Holland House sign in script. The revitalized hotel became popular throughout the Denver metro area, especially for the food served in the Holland House Coffee Shop. Holland retired from the hotel business in the early 1980’s and the Holland House slowly drifted into disrepair under a series of owners over the next several years. In 1987 the hotel closed altogether.

The Table Mountain Inn
For several years the building stood empty and it was feared that Golden had lost its only real hotel. But in 1991, a team of successful restaurateurs, Bart Bortles and Frank Day, began the biggest overhaul of the hostelry since it was built as the Hotel Berrimoor in 1925. Bortles and Day spent $3 million to achieve what is now the Table Mountain Inn. They resurfaced the exterior surfaces in stucco, and gutted the interior rooms, rebuilding it in its present elegant southwestern décor. The hotel then had 32 individually designed guest rooms, a lounge and full service restaurant. In December 1998 the Table Mountain Inn began another transition into what it is today; 42 additional guest rooms have been added, along with additional parking to accommodate our guests. From its Spanish style to its relaxed but elegant atmosphere, the hotel has come full circle from its origins as the Hotel Berrimoor, a “modern, up-to-the-minute” hotel where “nothing has been overlooked for the convenience of the guests” and “of which the city can be proud.”