Wurlitzer Style 32-A
Concert PianOrchestra
The Crystal Palace Hotel, Leadville, Colorado

(Photograph courtesy of Sue Fikany)

The big three-story Crystal Palace Hotel building, circa the 1950s, stands out in stark contrast at the rear of the photograph. With the advent of prohibition in 1920 the wood frame building and the brick Miner's Exchange Bank (at right) became the Vienna Grocery and Meat Market.

(Photograph courtesy of Sue Fikany)

The old and historic Crystal Palace Hotel being demolished in April of 1961. From 1923 up until his death in 1950 John Perme, a.k.a., John Bernat, owned the building. John Perme's estate sold the building in 1953. John "Bernat" Perme operated Bernat's Saloon in a large ground level room on the left front side of the hotel. The faded last name of the previous owners, Joe and Louis Martinelli, can still be discerned on the building's weathered side.

(Photograph courtesy of Beverly & Roger Phillips)

Site of John "Bernat" Perme's Saloon and Boarding House in 1976. The establishment was popularly known as the Crystal Palace Hotel, located at the corner of Chestnut and Pine Street, Leadville, Colorado. Charles Roger Phillips is shown sitting on his Grandfather Perme's safe. The safe was kept in the parlor, and the combination was changed on a regular basis. Consequently, when John "Bernat" Perme died no one in the family knew the combination. The family then, expecting to find vast sums of money inside, forcibly removed the safe's heavy door, revealing nothing more than a few dollars and some worthless stock certificates.

(Photograph courtesy of Sue Fikany)

The former site of the old Crystal Palace Hotel at the corner of Chestnut and Pine Streets in Leadville, Colorado. This is how it looks today (in 2004), gazing across an empty, weed strewn lot now devoid of the grand old hotel that once stood tall at this very spot.