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Broadwater Hotel Helena Montana Dining China

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Western Americana Start Price:10.00 USD Estimated At:100.00 - 150.00 USD
Broadwater Hotel Helena Montana Dining China
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9" diameter. The elegant Hotel Broadwater and Natatorium complex was built in 1888-89 by Montana railroad, real estate and banking tycoon Charles A. Broadwater. It was located just a few miles west of the roaring gold-mining town of Helena, Montana, which at that time boasted more millionaires per capita than any other city in the world Situated on forty landscaped acres along Ten Mile Creek, the 50-room hotel and huge natatorium opened during the week of August 26, 1889. Construction of the project took one year, and cost $500,000. The hotel was world-class, opulently furnished and fitted. The spectacular Moorish-style natatorium was the world's largest indoor pool, fed by over one million gallons of hot mountain spring water per day. The grounds were handsomely landscaped, with winding driveways, fountains and a private lake. Electric trolleys took patrons to and from downtown Helena. The air was clean, and the surrounding countryside was beautiful. Hilda Potter, born in 1906, worked in the hotel as a waitress in 1934 while living in Rimini. She told me some of her adventures….We broke a lot of these, she told me holding a large Red Lace dinner platter. You could be clumsy and get away with it, if you had looks. Hilda went to the hotel a few days after the 1935 earthquake to help staff clean up inside. It was a mess, she said, glass everywhere and some of the best stuff all over the floor. We took most of the rubbish and broken pottery out the back and threw it in by the creek. Hilda was a great lady with some amazing stories, she passed a few years ago, in her late 90s, but I will always remember her mischievous early days at the hotel. She was a bit of a kleptomaniac in her day, having amassed a small fortune in trinkets she acquired thorough her life. She was a really cool lady.