Connor Hotel

Situated on the corner of Jerome Avenue and Main Street, the Connor Hotel is the third commercial edifice built by David Connor on this site. It replaced an earlier wooden lodging house that burned in 1897. Despite its stone exterior construction, the second one burned as well, but since Connor had purchased fire insurance, he was able to erect this two-story brick building in 1898 from the $14,500 he received. The new hotel featured a bar, pool hall, and card rooms on the first floor, and twenty guest rooms on the second, let for $1 per night. An 1899 fire gutted the interior, although the exterior walls withstood the conflagration. Conner rebuilt the interior and reopened the hotel in August 1899. Considered one of the finest hotels in town, boasting electricity and a call-bell service in each room, it was also one of the most popular among visitors to the roaring mining town in the early twentieth century.

Red-brick walls, fired in the Britton and Sharp brickyards in nearby Cottonwood, rise from a locally quarried stone foundation. Pilasters divide the street facades into irregular bays. Shops with plate glass windows line the Main Street elevation’s first level; the second floor features segmental-arched, double-hung windows on the second floor. The chamfered corner contains a round-arched building entrance with transom and decorative lintel; on its second floor, a parapet sign above a segmental-arched window broadcasts the establishment’s name and construction date. While the first story has been plastered and whitewashed, the second story is still the original exposed red brick. The southwest and southeast facades feature decorative belt courses of soldier bricks as well as an ornately patterned brick cornice, atop which a parapet hides the flat roof.

The Connor Hotel closed in 1931, although the first-floor bar and shops remained open. It was resurrected as a lodging house in the 1960s, but closed again in 1987. In 2000, the Conlin family purchased the building, restored and enlarged the ten guest rooms, and currently maintains the “Spirit Room” bar and shops on the ground level.