What we know
Two-story frame hotel with a one-and-a-half-story wing, labeled 'Hotel Ellis' in 1895; by 1900 the same building is a dwelling marked 'formerly hotel' (S-0147). Lavelett's photo caption puts Mrs. Limbach's dry goods and millinery store at this corner about 1880 (S-0011, p. 12), and her 'original dress-making shop', later the Hunter building, burned on the corner of Front and Second in the winter of 1921 (p. 79). Whether the hotel was the same building is not known.
Where it was
101 Front Street, the northwest corner of Front and Second, on the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Monument, sheet 1, Nov. 1895 and Oct. 1900 (Library of Congress, S-0147); placed by fitting the sheet to today's Front, Washington and Jefferson street crossings at 1st and 3rd streets (six points, each within about 15 feet of the fit). Good to about a hundred feet.
Sources
- S-0011: Lucille Lavelett, Through the Years at Monument, Colorado: The Story of Monument, Colorado, 5th printing (Palmer Lake: Palmer Lake Historical Society, 2004); first published Colorado Springs: Valliant Press, 1975
- S-0147: Sanborn-Perris Map Co., Monument, El Paso County, Col., fire-insurance maps, sheet 1, November 1895 and October 1900 (Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Sanborn Maps collection)
Sources are named in the text above. Numbers such as S-0080 refer to our source list. Most newspaper quotations were read in the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. Long quotations from recent books are shortened here.