The city was a mere 34 years old when Henry C. Brown opened the doors of his monument to himself in August, 1892. It was a braggart city built by men who had made fortunes based on the gold and silver drawn from the mountains they then viewed from mansions on Capitol Hill where Brown had first homesteaded. They welcomed the new, elegant locale in which to conduct their business deals. Their wives took tea and their daughters danced at lavish balls.

It was fittingly a palace for "The Queen City of the Plains" as Denver dubbed itself. Inside the hotel designed by architect Frank E. Edbrooke, the eight story atrium, its pillars and wainscoting of pale golden onyx from Mexico reflecting the pastel shades of the stained glass ceiling, rivaled the grandest of hotels "back East." A massive fireplace, the mantel of which was supported by two solid pillars of onyx, was a welcome amenity when the winter winds howled down from the snow-capped peaks to the west.

Through the years, The Brown Palace has seen it all - boom times and depressions, peace and war. If the walls could talk, what stories they would tell of love and betrayal, success and failure, happiness and despair.

Emperors, kings and presidents have been cosseted here. Royal queens and the goddesses of stage and screen have primped in these rooms. The walls know their stories. We can only imagine them.

President and Mrs. Eisenhower were the most frequent First Family to visit The Brown Palace. It served as his pre-campaign headquarters in 1952, and they spent many of their summer vacations here. To commemorate them, the former Presidential Suite was renamed The Eisenhower Suite in 1980. The Eisenhower stories are recounted during the twice-weekly historical tours (Wednesday and Saturday, 2:00 p.m.).

More than 700 wrought iron grill work panels ring the lobby from the third through the seventh floor. Two of them are upside down, one to serve the tradition that man, who can not be perfect, must put a flaw into his handiwork; the other sneaked in by a disgruntled workman. Finding these bits of history intrigue visitors to the 112-year old Brown Palace.