The Lake Hotel is one of a series of hotels built to accommodate visitors to Yellowstone National Park in the late 19th and early 20th century. Built originally in 1891, it was re-designed and substantially expanded by Robert Reamer, architect of the Old Faithful Inn in 1903. In contrast to the Old Faithful Inn, the Lake Hotel is a relatively plain clapboarded Colonial Revival structure with two large Ionic porticoes facing Yellowstone Lake.
The original 1891 hotel was a large three-story structure with projecting bays at each end. Its construction was supervised by R.R. Cummins for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which was building two other, similar hotels in the park. Reamer's 1903 remodeling changed these projections to the present Ionic porticoes. An eastward extension was added at this time, with a third matching portico. In 1922-23 a further extension to the east was undertaken, this with a flat roof. In 1928 a two-story west wing was added, expanding the dining room and adding a solarium to the front. The entire hotel was extensively renovated from 1984 to 1990.
The Lake Hotel is adjoined by the Lake Fish Hatchery Historic District and the Grand Loop Road Historic District.
Famous quotes containing the words lake and/or hotel:
“Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“...what a thing it is to lie there all day in the fine breeze, with the pine needles dropping on one, only to return to the hotel at night so hungry that the dinner, however homely, is a fete, and the menu finer reading than the best poetry in the world! Yet we are to leave all this for the glare and blaze of Nice and Monte Carlo; which is proof enough that one cannot become really acclimated to happiness.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)