Developer Mark Hunt is turning the Crystal Palace into a luxury boutique hotel comprised of 20 rooms which will offer a full spa, fitness center, pool, restaurant, café and a rooftop terrace with beautiful views of Aspen Mountain.
The structure of the building was torn down recently, leaving only the famous brick facade as monument to the building’s history. Tim Willoughby, Aspen’s unofficial historian and Aspen Times columnist (sort of a modern day George Templeton Strong) penned (keyed) this thoughtful essay on the meaning of preservation. He writes, “Over time, stories generated by thousands of patrons recede to a whisper. The stories themselves need preservation, perhaps more than does the wholesale food commodity business that the Palace housed during Victorian times.”
