The Garden City Telegram
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A trip back in time
Published 6/8/2009 in Beef Empire Days-Entertainment
By STEPHANIE FARLEY
Rachael Rivera, Garden City, toured the Windsor Hotel in 2008.
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Brad Nading/Telegram — Mike Perez, center, shown in the Windsor Hotel atrium, conducts his first tour Saturday during the Finney County Preservance Alliance's tours of the facility.
She and her family were new to the area and wanted to check out the place, so they took advantage of the tours the Finney County Preservation Alliance gave last year.
Rivera decided to tour again this year during Beef Empire Days, with tours given by the alliance, because of the period room designed by Lauren Harness, who's the daughter of Alliance President Don Harness. Rivera said she's always amazed by the fact that when the Windsor was built in 1887, it only had one public bathroom for the 125 rooms in the hotel.
"Must have had some lines," Rivera said, smiling, of the bathroom. "Especially when the stagecoach came."
While the alliance gives tours whenever the organization has a tour guide available, the hotel is not often opened up to the public. On Saturday, immediately after the BED parade, the hotel was open for tours. Voices of the general public and tour guides filled the building, and the sound of stairs being climbed to the second, third and fourth floors could be heard throughout the hotel.
"It'll look nice when they're done with it," Rivera said of efforts to restore the hotel to some use.
It has long been a goal of the alliance to renovate the former hotel in some form or fashion. While the alliance is busy looking for grants to apply for, nothing, yet, has come about to develop the entire hotel or its first floor.
Ann Pottorf, a tour guide for the alliance, remembers visiting the hotel in the 1970s when the building was open. She started her tour group on the first floor, where she told them she'd had the good fortune to see the hotel when it still was operational.
The Windsor served as a hotel until 1977, when the upper floors for the hotel were closed because they didn't meet fire code standards.
In the 1880s, people could look back toward Garden City from miles around and see the hotel, Pottorf told them. "It was quite the undertaking," she said, adding the hotel is somewhat misleading regarding its size from Main Street. "You can't believe how big it is."
The hotel started with 125 rooms and then shrunk as additional plumbing was added to the building.
Pottorf pointed out to the group a cast-iron support on the first floor of the hotel, shining her flashlight at the beam and then to the tin ceiling. She also pointed out a photo of the original lobby of the hotel, telling the group they were now standing where the lobby used to be before Garnand Furniture occupied the hotel's first floor.
Pottorf then told the group to climb the stairs to the second floor, explaining they'd see what is the magic of the hotel as they rounded the corner.
"It's quite a surprise," Pottorf told them. "You won't expect it."
Pottorf explained after the tour that as many times as she's been inside the Windsor, it's always an "awesome" experience to see the atrium, "because you don't believe that that's there."
"Mine is just admiration," Pottorf said of her story of seeing the Windsor.
She said she's always said that if she ever won the lottery, she'd put it toward the restoration of the hotel. Personally, she said, she'd like to see the Windsor once again become a hotel, or at least house a restaurant.
The alliance has been working so long to keep the Windsor from becoming "unworthy of itself," she said. "It's such a grand place."
It's now tougher for Pottorf to get up the stairs, she said, but "it's still worth the hike" for the atrium.
The hotel's other rooms, Pottorf said, were just rooms, but the atrium is special, adding the atrium and hotel are "something for which we should be proud."
David Cartwright and his son, Rowdy, 15, took a tour Saturday.
David said he'd been through the hotel a long time ago, saying, "it's been over 20 years ago."
On Saturday, Cartwright said he and his son had traveled over from Syracuse to Garden City to purchase guitar strings and were wandering around downtown when they stumbled upon the hotel tours.
Cartwright said the quality of the building, while Rowdy said the atrium, stood out to them.
"Once they're inside, it's the atrium," Harness said of what stands out to people about the hotel.
Harness estimated Saturday afternoon that about 200 people made their way through the Windsor.
He said the alliance has a June 17 meeting scheduled to discuss additional grant opportunities to explore for the Windsor's future.
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