Longtime Boulder residents may feel a nostalgic vibe when recounting memories of the Millennium Harvest House hotel.

For many, the hotel, originally known as the Harvest House, was a unique community space, a place where people could let their hair down, kick back, and get a little wild on a Friday afternoon. It was a place to gather, a place to party with live music, a place to party before University of Colorado Boulder football games.

For others, it was a place to play a favorite sport. At one time, the hotel boasted tennis courts and swimming pools. For decades, there were weekly visitors to the Harvest House to play tennis. Some liked to take their families there on weekends and during summer vacations.

Now, the 65-year-old hotel is in the process of being demolished to make way for a new student-focused housing development. Landmark Properties Inc., the developer of the Harvest House hotel site, plans to build three 55-foot-tall buildings with 295 apartments and 931 bedrooms.

In Boulder, where open land is scarce, it’s not uncommon for old buildings to be torn down and replaced with new ones. There’s widespread agreement that there’s a shortage of affordable housing in Boulder, and evidence from other cities suggests that increasing the housing supply can be an effective solution. And the project at the Millennium hotel site would add a significant amount of new housing.

But it’s also reasonable to ask what might be lost in a city where the old is constantly being cleared away to make way for the new. Harvest House was a relic of a bygone era in Boulder, a venerable place whose stories and legends still live on in the memories of those who frequented it over the years.

Harvest House: The early days (1959-1970s)

When the old hotel began to be demolished, the building was far from its former glory, years past its prime. It had fallen into disrepair, in part because the owners had reportedly not invested much in its upkeep over the past decade or two. In February 2023, the hotel made headlines when a man was arrested after firing several shots in his room.

But in its heyday, the Harvest House was the pride of Boulder, a glamorous hotel that once aspired to be a country club, hosting conferences, fashion shows, champagne brunches and more in its early days.

Daily Camera newspaper clippings from late 1958 announced the imminent opening of a new hotel along 28th Street. The original owners were two brothers from Texas, John and Clinton Murchison. Construction took almost a year, but by July 1959 the hotel was complete and the first reservations had already been made.

Newspaper clippings from the Daily Camera in the 1960s detailed how the hotel became a “space-age convention center”—a gathering place for executives, scientists, and other VIPs from agencies such as the National Bureau of Standards, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The hotel also became a favorite with soccer crowds and summer tourists.

Carl McWilliams of Cultural Resource Historians LLC wrote in a 2021 report that the hotel is “notable for the role it played in establishing Boulder as a center for space industry research and computer technology in the late 1950s, and for drawing Denver residents and other Coloradans to Boulder for both social and business purposes.”

Crazy times in the 1970s, 80s and 90s

The Harvest House’s personality began to change over time. In the 1970s and ’80s, the hotel became a community gathering place known for its raucous parties and live music shows. McWilliams wrote that during those years, the hotel was “at the forefront of Boulder’s music and party scene and changing cultural norms.”

By this time, the hotel was hosting everything from dinner theater productions to poetry readings to music festivals. And by the late 1970s and early 1980s, the hotel began hosting large parties every Friday afternoon. The now infamous Friday Afternoon Club (known to many as the FAC) drew crowds, many of whom parked their cars in the median on 28th Street and headed to the hotel’s garden to drink and mingle.

In an article titled “Where the Hips Meet to Travel” in the July 1980 issue of Newsweek, Lynn Langway and Janet Huck wrote that offices in Boulder would close at 3 p.m. “so people could run home, put on their tank tops, and still make it to the 4 p.m. start time on the lawn of the Harvest House hotel.”

Harold Fielden remembers those FAC events well. His band, The Legendary 4-Nikators, played at the Harvest House countless times from 1980 to 1982, and went to FAC events that he described as sometimes being “crazy.” Fielden described the large numbers of people who came from all over to mingle and “meet” at those events.

“I walked through the lobby and there was a long line in the lobby and people were checking in. Maybe they were too drunk to drive, I don’t know, but they were clearly new couples,” Fielden said. “… People met each other that day and decided, ‘Okay, let’s get a room.’ On those FAC Fridays, … I think (the hotel) did very, very well selling last-minute rooms.”

Fielden added that many partygoers, including a friend of someone she knew, married people they met at FAC events.

Fielden’s musical performances at the Harvest House were also worth seeing. He once played to a crowd of 10,000 people there. For one show, Fielden said, the general manager of the Harvest House even built a ramp so someone could jump on stage on a motorcycle.

“We were just doing stupid stuff on stage and not caring about what was going on,” Fielden said.

The hotel also became a party venue for people attending CU Buffs football games. Fielden remembers people “partying day and night.”

After a few years, the Harvest House stopped hosting FAC parties, perhaps in part because the hotel received too many noise and parking complaints from nearby neighbors. There were reported efforts to revive FAC events in the 1990s or early 2000s, but they eventually fizzled out and FAC is no more.

A thriving tennis centre

Even in the days of FAC parties and raucous concerts, Harvest House was more than just a place for wild parties. In the mid-1970s, Harvest House added outdoor tennis courts, and by 1977 the hotel had its own head tennis professional on staff. In 1979, the hotel acquired a tennis dome that allowed players to play inside during the winter months.

The hotel began hosting tournaments and big-name events on its tennis courts. In 1979, it hosted the Almaden Grand Champions Tour, which brought together tennis legends such as Pancho Gonzalez, Turbin Urich and Frank Sedgman.

The Rocky Mountain Tennis Club also had a base at the Harvest House. Duke Paluch, who co-founded RMTC and started working at the hotel in 1985, said that for many people in Boulder, tennis was not just a sport, but also a social outlet.

“People come to the club on the same day and develop lifelong friendships,” he said. “It’s a great community. It’s a great place to make social connections.”

Cheryl Sussman and her family were living in the mountains near Boulder in the early 1980s, but they wanted a place in the city to play tennis, so they became members of the Harvest House. Their membership gave them access to tennis courts, pools and other hotel amenities.

It turned out to be a place where the whole family could spend time together. Sussman and her husband played tennis, their daughters took tennis lessons, and the family hung out by the pool. The family would go there several times a week. On the Fourth of July, the Sussmans would watch the fireworks at CU Stadium from the Harvest House hot tub.

“We spent a lot of time there in the summers when (our kids) were growing up,” he said. “… It was just a really cool place to hang out.”

Sussman would sometimes go to FAC events with friends and have picnics. He also remembers being able to listen to music from the events while playing tennis. And even though FAC events had long ended, he continued to go to Harvest House to play tennis until the courts closed for good this spring.

Losing some of Boulder’s ‘soul’

Looking back, many who once spent time at the Harvest House say the hotel had been “going downhill” for years, and the demolition wasn’t exactly a surprise. Still, they have fond memories of the place. And tennis players, in particular, are upset about the loss of the courts. Boulder already had too few courts to meet the growing demand for the sport, and now that the Harvest House courts are gone, the shortage of courts has gotten worse.

“It was a great facility, and there’s nothing that can replace it,” Sussman said. “That leaves a lot of people in Boulder who played there with nowhere else to play except on the public courts.”

The historical significance of the Harvest House has been the subject of some debate. McWilliams’ historical report stated that despite the hotel’s historical significance, it did not qualify for listing on the National Register of Historic Places or the State Register of Historic Monuments due to “loss of integrity”; the hotel had undergone changes and renovations over the years.

Harvest House also did not qualify for the city of Boulder landmark designation, but some Boulder historians, such as Leonard Segel, felt it was a mistake for the city not to allow the public to have a say in whether the Harvest House should be considered a landmark.

“From a historic preservation standpoint … for a building this significant, the public should have had an opportunity to voice their opinion on whether it was worth getting a demolition permit,” Segel said.

Cities are constantly growing and changing. And in Boulder, many different needs and desires must compete for very limited space. Still, Segel said it’s unfortunate that the city is losing pieces of its past.

“We’re losing a little bit of our spirit, our spirituality, where the community comes from and what makes it such an innovative place,” he said.

Original Release Date: August 9, 2024, 21:06