Originally constructed in 1891, the Sheridan Hotel has been welcoming guests for over one hundred thirty years. Like the town itself, the hotel was built with riches from gold and silver strikes in the surrounding San Juan Mountains. The original Sheridan Hotel was a two-story wooden frame structure located directly east of the Courthouse. A fire destroyed the building in 1893. The present brick building at 231 West Colorado Avenue was erected next door to the burnt lot. The newly constructed, three-story building was completed in 1895 and reopened as the New Sheridan Hotel, this time in brick. Thus, the Sheridan has been “new” since 1895. No other attempts were made to rebuild on the original site for nearly a century, and the land appears in many historic photos as a grassy yard in front of the adjoining Sheridan Opera House. The American Room still retains two west-facing windows that once looked out onto the grass of the original hotel site.
The early days of the New Sheridan Hotel saw it blossom as the growing town’s social center. The Continental Room Restaurant boasted sixteen velvet-lined, curtained booths, each equipped with a button for discreetly summoning the waiter only when needed. The service and cuisine of the adjoining American Room was said to have rivaled the Brown Palace in Denver.
The current two-story building that houses the New Sheridan Restaurant, additional hotel rooms and The Roof, was constructed in 1994 on the site of the original hotel. Styled so closely to the architecture of the 1895 building next door, the two are nearly indistinguishable.
Recently the entire hotel facility underwent its first major renovation in over a hundred years. What had slowly become a run-down miner’s hostel was magically restored into the glowing centerpiece it had once been. Monthly rentals, bunk-bed rooms and community bathrooms were stripped and recreated as 26 luxury hotel rooms and suites, complete with Victorian era antiques. Mid-way through the lobby, there is an original wall of hand-tooled pine different from the rest of the decor. Upon closer inspection, one can see how this divider wall, stripped of dozens of layers of paint and preserved from destruction, was used to dictate the meticulous recreation of the entire ground floor in glorious, detailed cherry.
