National+Register+of+Historical+Places

 Retyped from Kansas Hutchinson News - May 1972

GARDEN CITY - A Garden City hotel, once labeled the "Waldorf of the Prairies," recently became the latest Southwest Kansas site to be named to the National Register of Historical Places by the National Park Service.

Rep. Keith Sebelius, R-Kan., said the Windsor Hotel was named to the register because of the significance of its distinctive architecture, "which is part of our national heritage."

The elegant 125-room hostelry was built in 1887-88 by John A. Stevens on land he homesteaded in 1879. Originally from Illinois, Stevens was one of the first settlers in Garden City.

With specific instructions that his was to be the biggest and most impressive building in town, Stevens commissioned J.H. Stevens and C.L Thompson to design and build the structure. The completed Windsor was said to be the largest and most dazzling hostelry between Missouri and Colorado, and remained so for years.

The hotel is a red brick trimmed with native limestone accents. The bricks were fired at a local kiln.

= Now Furniture Store = = = Currently the lower floor of the hotel, now owned by Bryand Garnand, Garden City, is a combination of the Garnand Furniture Store and Renick Drug Co. No. 1. The upper floor of the structure still contains hotel rooms.

Other sites in Southwest Kansas previously given this honor were Wagonbed Springs, on the Cimarron River southwest of Ulysses, which was designated a registered national historic landmark in October, 1962; the El Quartelejo pueblo ruins in Scott County State Park which drew identical designation; and the Santa Fe Trail ruts just west of Howell where the ruts still are cut deeply into the earth almost a century after the last covered wagon passed by.