It seems unthinkable now, but the Weatherford Hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona, was in such sorry shape that a building inspector recommended tearing it down in 1975.
That and other fascinating facts about the Route 66 landmark were contained in a recent article in the Arizona Daily Sun.
Brothers Henry and Lloyd Taylor bought the hotel 50 years ago, and it had deteriorated after original owner John Weatherford died in 1934. The hotel opened on New Year’s Day in 1900.
When hearing the building inspector’s grim opinion a half-century ago, “we had to prove him wrong,” Henry Taylor recalled.
Taylor and his wife Pamela “Sam” Green still own the motel five decades later.
How did they turn it around?
- They marketed it initially as an international youth hostel. Europeans liked the history of the building.
- Green’s skills in restoration and cooking boosted the hotel in two directions — restoring its early 20th-century look and bringing in customers with its cuisine.
- Reopening the hotel’s pub with live music juiced downtown’s once-moribund nightlife scene.
- Using an old photograph found in the hotel as a guide, they restored the hotel’s long-gone balcony.
- The Weatherford hosted the first New Year’s Eve giant pine cone drop in 1999, which became a Flagstaff tradition.
(Night image of the Weatherford Hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona, by Curtis Gregory Perry via Flickr)