Presidential tidbits from The Brown Palace

By Penny Parker, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 26, 2008 at 6:24 p.m.
Updated June 26, 2008 at 6:24 p.m.

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Past Presidential notes from The Brown Palace Hotel:

* Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to stop at The Brown Palace Hotel. He came to Colorado to hunt bear in the spring of 1905. During his trip, he spoke to a group of businessmen at an elaborate banquet at the hotel. Roosevelt preceded the trend for cigar smoking; 1,500 cigars were smoked during the event.

* President Roosevelt's first request on arriving at the hotel in September of 1912 was a "tub of ice water." It seems his throat was dry after speaking in five Colorado towns that day. This was during his campaign for president on the Bull Moose Party ticket.

* In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower had a travel allowance of $40,000 per year. A Denver reporter estimated that an eight week vacation in Denver would cost $25,000, which included $2,500 per week for lodging and meals for a staff of 17, nine Army Signal Corpsmen and an undisclosed number of Secret Service agents.

* President Eisenhower loved to fish. To please the president, the hotel created an ice carving of a mountain complete with pine trees and a miniature lake at the base of the mountain in which swam three tiny trout. Ike was enchanted with the creation and could hardly keep his eyes off the lake and its tiny inhabitants. Thus, when one trout suddenly flipped himself out of the pool and onto the carpet, Ike leaped out of his chair to the rescue, nearly upsetting the table in his eagerness to save the fish.

* The executive chef at The Brown Palace created a special dish for President Eisenhower: Beef Tenderloin a la Presidente. Ike liked it so much, he ordered it three days in a row.

* Ike hit a wayward golf ball while practicing in the room and made a dent in the fireplace mantel in the Eisenhower Suite. It remains today as a souvenir.

* The Gold Room on the second floor of the hotel, site of President Clinton’s oval office for the Denver Summit of the Eight, was also the room President Eisenhower used to pen some of his memoirs.

* It is said that a presidential salute was fired from a cannon on the roof of the hotel when Woodrow Wilson was a guest.

* A report during President Warren G. Harding's stay in July of 1923 said, "The White House for a few hours is on the eighth floor of The Brown Palace Hotel, and it will hold this temporary site until the party resumes its Western jaunt at 1:30 o'clock this afternoon."

* In 1919, room service head waiter Randolph Witek, who had served presidents Taft, Roosevelt and Wilson at the hotel, reported that President Wilson was the lightest eater of the three. President William Howard Taft, he recalled, ate an enormous breakfast, while the appetite of President Roosevelt was scarcely less hearty.

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