Welcome to the Weatherford
Charly’s Pub & Grill – 8am to close daily
Zane Grey – 4pm – close Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Gopher Hole – 4pm to close daily
History of The Weatherford Hotel
Disastrous fires plagued early Flagstaff, like most frontier towns. After a particularly bad series of blazes in 1897, the city passed an ordinance requiring all buildings in the business area to be built of brick, stone or iron. Among the new buildings appearing in the year 1897 was the Weatherford Hotel, built by John W. Weatherford (1859-1934), a native of Weatherford, Texas. The original structure housed a general store on the first floor and the Weatherford family upstairs.
Sometime in 1899 Weatherford realized that tourism was going to be an economic boom because of a new train to the Grand Canyon. In March of 1899, Weatherford began construction of a three story brick hotel addition. The grand opening of the Weatherford Hotel was New Year’s Day 1900. For years, the Weatherford was the most prominent hotel in Flagstaff, entertaining guests such as artist Thomas Moran, publisher William Randolph Hearst, and western writer Zane Grey. Greys’ famous novel “The Call of the Canyon” was written in the Zane Grey Ballroom, hence the name.
A beautiful sunroom occupied part of the top floor and was used for dances and parties, while numerous civic groups engaged the downstairs. A three-sided balcony, visible in the 1905 photograph hanging in the lobby was damaged by fire and removed in 1929, along with the original cupola. At various times, the hotel housed a theatre, restaurant, billiard hall and radio station.
Henry Taylor, the present owner, purchased the hotel in 1975 in an attempt to save it from being demolished, at a time when the downtown area was in an acute state of disrepair and decline. Since then, Henry and his wife Pamela (Sam) Green who joined his team in 1980, have been continually renovating the structure, with the goal of restoring the hotel to its original grandeur.
In 1978 Henry started Charly’s restaurant and in 1981 Charly’s Pub was added to the first floor.
When transcontinental telephone service first reached Flagstaff about 1910, a small brick building with a three-bay façade of red Coconino sandstone was erected south of the Weatherford Hotel to serve the telephone company, becoming part of the “Weatherford Block.” The building served its original purpose until at least the 1930’s, when it underwent the first of two modernizations. The sandstone façade was stuccoed over in a modified art-deco style, and it was called the La Brea Café’. Then in the 1950’s aluminum siding was added and it was The Weatherford Café’ for many years. In 1995the Taylor’s restored the appearance of the original 1909 Telephone Exchange and renamed it the Exchange Pub after the original telephone company. The casual ambience of the Exchange Pub and Charly’s dining room are reminiscent of Flagstaff’s heyday at the turn of the century with original pictures and memorabilia from the hotel.
After the Taylor’s received one of the largest commercial grants at the in Arizona for the restoration of the balconies, the third floor Zane Grey Ballroom was renovated first and opened in 1997 to prepare for the reconstruction of the balconies, with the first stage of reconstructing the wrap-around porches being completed in December of 1998. The Gopher Hole (renamed after an original club in the basement) was renovated in 2014 which began the true engineering of rebuilding the floors to the interior of the whole building. In June 2016 the rest of the engineering of the building was completed by stacking steel posts and beams through the first floor and second floors so all of the building is now operational with 17 hotel rooms. All of our queen rooms have original claw foot tubs and showers. The lobby ceiling was restored to its original height of 19 feet, with a new concierge desk was added when the 1930’s mezzanine was removed. The Taylor’s feel like the caretakers of the hotel and now can say they left the hotel better than they found it, with the only part of the building needing to be done is an addition to the back of the hotel for a new fire escape and elevator tower that should be completed by 2018.
