A black and white photo postcard of the Gadsden Hotel dining room in Douglas. A steam radiator is in the foreground. The front caption at the bottom reads: “Gadsden Hotel, Douglas Arizona”. The postcard is unused and was published by the Humphries Photo Company, El Paso, Texas. Douglas Dispatch Collection.

The Gadsden Hotel was built on G Avenue in Douglas opened in November 1907 and was named after the Gadsden Purchase. Construction cost $150,000 or around $4,680,000 in 2021 and the contract was awarded to C.O. Ellis. The hotel was built five stories tall and with one hundred and sixty finely furnished rooms. At the time every room included the then-modern amenity of a telephone and private bathrooms. The lobby boasts a staircase of white Italian marble with four columns and decorated with a forty-two-foot-wide Tiffany-stained glass mural. The fire suffered a devastating fire on February 7th 1928 and had to be rebuilt by the El Paso firm Trost & Trost. The Gadsden Hotel was added to the list of National Register of Historic Places in 1976. A number of films were shot in the hotel’s lobby including Violent Saturday (1955) and Terminal Velocity (1994). Among its more famous guests include Eleanor Roosevelt, John Wayne and Faye Dunaway.

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