Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Day 37 of 365 Days of Boulderado Photos ~ Lobby Tile Floor

When it comes to the Hotel Boulderado's lobby, many people are so taken with the staircase and stained-glass ceiling that they fail to notice something else -- the tile floor. The lobby tile floor is still original from 1909, including the bits that extend into Q's Restaurant. The designs vary on where you are in the lobby, but overall it's meant to give you a Native American motif. This was done intentionally to honor the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes who used to summer in the Boulder area. Legend has it the Hotel Boulderado was built on the site of their wigwam, the place where they would come together and gather, meet, and celebrate with each other. In this way, I like to think of the Hotel Boulderado as one of Boulder's wigwams, since people often use the hotel as a point of contact for meetings, weddings, celebrations, and visiting friends and family members.