Brown Palace Hotel

Denver's premier luxury hotel since 1892, designed by architect Frank Edbrooke in Italian Renaissance style. The iconic triangular building features a stunning nine-story atrium lobby and has hosted every sitting president since Teddy Roosevelt.

Denver's Brown Palace Hotel opened on August 12, 1892, the vision of Henry C. Brown, an Ohio carpenter who had homesteaded the triangular plot at 17th and Broadway during the Colorado gold rush. Architect Frank Edbrooke designed the Italian Renaissance landmark with an iron-and-steel fireproof frame -- one of the first in America, featured in an 1892 Scientific American cover story -- crowned by a nine-story atrium with a stained-glass ceiling that floods the lobby with light. Every sitting president since Theodore Roosevelt has stayed here, with the exception of Calvin Coolidge. But it is the hotel's darker history that keeps it in the national conversation.

On May 24, 1911, the hotel's elegant Marble Bar became a crime scene when Frank Henwood drew a revolver and shot Tony Von Phul of St. Louis in a jealous dispute over married Denver socialite Isabel Springer. Bystander George Copeland was also killed in the crossfire. The double murder, documented in Dick Kreck's book Murder at the Brown Palace, remains the hotel's most infamous chapter and is often cited as a catalyst for the paranormal activity that followed.

The most persistent haunting centers on Room 904, the former apartment of Louise Crawford Hill, a Denver socialite who lived in the suite from 1940 until her death in 1955. During a ninth-floor renovation that gutted all phone lines and furnishings from her room, the hotel switchboard began receiving calls originating from 904 -- answered only by cold static and faint whispers. Hotel historian Julia Kanellos had been including Louise's story on guest tours; when the historians experimentally removed her tale from the rotation, the phantom calls stopped. They have never resumed.

Room 846 harbors a young couple dressed in 1920s attire who have been witnessed by guests and staff alike. The wife ghost is reportedly hostile to uninvited visitors -- suitcases have been overturned, cell phones flung through the air, and at least one guest reported being locked inside the room by an unseen force. In the former San Marco dining room, now Ellyngton's, a hotel employee once discovered a formally dressed string quartet rehearsing late at night despite no performance being scheduled. When told they needed to leave, one of the musicians replied, "Don't worry about us. We live here," before all four vanished. A ghostly train conductor in a vintage uniform appears periodically near what was once a Rock Island Railroad ticket office on the ground floor, floating through a wall and disappearing. A phantom waiter in full uniform has been seen by elevator passengers, vanishing mid-ride. On the tenth floor, a prankster entity whistles and mimics the voices of coworkers, confirmed by long-time staff. In the Churchill Cigar Bar, the sound system has activated independently -- switching channels and adjusting volume while powered off -- activity attributed to the spirit of founder Henry C. Brown himself.

The Colorado chapter of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) investigated the hotel in 2012, capturing electronic voice phenomenon recordings of unexplained voices responding to investigator questions in empty rooms. Temperature monitoring equipment documented sudden drops of 15 to 20 degrees in specific hallway locations. In 2025, Historic Hotels of America named the Brown Palace one of its top 25 Most Haunted Hotels in the United States. The hotel offers seasonal ghost tours and Haunted Happy Hour events, and guests can still request Room 904 -- though many who do report flickering lights, spontaneous bathroom flooding, and the faint scent of old-fashioned perfume with no apparent source.