This 1887 innovation has served as a model for hotel design throughout the country. This four-story 55,000 square foot building opened with 125 hotel rooms, a large dining room, and 200 foot worth of space on the ground floor for businesses. The atrium was located on the second floor and extended upward for three stories and was topped by a vaulted skylight.

The Windsor Hotel is truly unique not only in style and design but purpose as well. It stood for opportunity and enterprise, for accommodation and dreams of wealth, a promise of a better future. Known as the "Waldorf of the Prairies," the hotel became headquarters for heads of wealthy cattle firms before the turn of the century. "It's spacious corridors and spindled patios were constantly thronged with booted and spurred cowmen. Cattle deals amounting to millions of dollars have been transacted over the long table in the great inner court."

The Windsor was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. In 1977 the Hotel portion was closed. The Hotel is currently owned by the Finney County Preservation Alliance who is working with New Communities LLC of Denver, Colorado to renovate the hotel into a 65-room boutique hotel with restaurant and bar on the ground floor.

E-mail: donharness@sbcglobal.net

Open for tours: By appointment. They're glad to arrange a tour!  Or, public tours during Beef Empire Days.