Lung Disease and Improved Healthfulness of Louis Dupuy’s Hotel de Paris

After the completion of the 1889 addition to Hotel de Paris, proprietor Louis Dupuy acquired a copy of Professor Koch’s Cure for Consumption by Berlin physician Dr. H. Feller.  The sixty-one-page book explained the discovery of tubercle bacillus by Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch, his experimental investigation, and application of his discovery.  It is Koch's claim of a remedy that seems to have impressed Dupuy and perhaps influenced his plans for expanding his popular French inn.

Professor Robert Koch

Due to Dupuy’s reputation as the best cook in the Colorado Territory, Hotel de Paris thrived into the 1890s.  The remodeling of his hotel restaurant and adding of a commercial kitchen in 1878, rapid-fire building of staff and guest rooms in 1881, constructing of salesmen’s sample rooms and guest rooms in 1882, and, shortly-thereafter, erecting of guest rooms and his own private quarters in 1889 indicates a depth of financial resources and a reason to grow his business:  demand for a variety of fine food prepared in the best manner, choices of imported liquor and soft drinks, and luxuriant accommodations in the refined and picturesque silver mining town of Georgetown, Colorado.  

Dupuy earned wealth from his childhood experiences, innate talent, professional training, self-imposed discipline, and hospitable demeanor.  After a fire vacated neighboring lots occupied by the  McClellan Opera House and Mrs. Johnson's millinery store in January 1892, Dupuy stepped up efforts to improve the appearance of the hotel, and, most importantly, developed plans for a six-room addition.  However, the Panic of 1893 and subsequent years-long economic depression could have stymied Dupuy’s achievements and closed his business, ending his dreams of redemption through respectability.  Yet in those uncertain economic times, instead or ratcheting down operations, he forged on.

The 1890 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows the Block 20 location of McClellan Opera House, Mrs. Johnson's millinery shop, a carriage repository, and Hotel de Paris

It is likely the economic depression negatively impacted Dupuy’s thriving business, although he continued to enjoy patronage from businessmen, Denverites, and wealthy tourists seeking entertainment in elevated regions where tuberculosis occurred less frequently (tuberculosis has been called "the disease that helped put Colorado on the map").  This is what makes the timing of his plan to expand the hotel during a financial disaster so curious.  Instead of clinging to his previous business model of packing people into his guest rooms to satisfy demand, Dupuy adopted a new business model that focused on high health and made changes to reduce congestion within the guest rooms and common areas of Hotel de Paris by offering what Dr. Koch recommended: clean living, privacy, and health.

The only way to accomplish this, yet maintain the volume he was experiencing, was to decrease the number of lodgers per room and add more rooms at a financially inopportune time.  Based on furniture, accessories, and linens stored in Rooms 7 and 8, Dupuy appeared to prepare the outfitting of an additional guest room and a gentlemen’s smoking room that would increase his own privacy as well as allow guests to spread out within the confines of his establishment. 

Dupuy's key board showcased twenty guest rooms, even though only fourteen existed within Hotel de Paris

No longer would same-sex lodgers (and strangers to one another) cram into hotel rooms and beds; by decreasing the occupancy in each guest room and common areas, Dupuy followed Dr. Koch’s recommendations to create uncrowded conditions by social distancing.

It may be the number of drinking glasses, towels, and pillowcases recorded on the appraisement bill (a just valuation of property) from the “Estate of Louis Dupuy, Deceased” (January 1901) that best reflects efforts to reduce guest room and common area occupancy levels:

• Sample Room 1 had become an office.
• Sample Room 2 had become Dupuy’s private library and smoking room.
• Rooms 3, 13, 14, and Annex Room 1 were staff quarters.
• Room 4 contained 1 pillowcase, 1 glass tumbler, 1 fancy Turkish towel, and 1 cuspidor (indicating one lodger).
• Room 5 contained 1 pair of sheets, 2 pillowcases, 1 glass tumbler (indicating up to two lodgers traveling together).
• Room 6 and Annex Room 2 each contained abundant furnishings and linens (indicating families or larger traveling parties who desired to remain grouped).
• Rooms 7, 8, and Annex Room 3 had become storerooms.
• Rooms 9, 10, 11, and 12 each contained 1 pair sheets, 2 pillowcases, and 1 glass tumbler (indicating up to two lodgers traveling together per room).

By the end of 1900, it appears Sample Rooms 1 and 2, Rooms 7 and 8, and Annex Room 3 were taken out of the Hotel de Paris guest room inventory; Rooms 3, 13, 14, and Annex Room 1 remained private staff quarters; Room 4 was decreased from two to one lodger; Room 5 (original capacity of four) was reduced to 1-2 lodgers; Rooms 9, 10, 11, and 12 continued to host 1 lodger (or two if traveling together).

By following Dr. Koch’s recommendations to cure consumption, Dupuy worked to decrease guest interaction by cutting his lodging capacity by nearly half; therefore, it seems plausible Dupuy’s earning potential could potentially be recovered by building more hotel rooms and common areas as well as developing a clientele keen on clean living, privacy, and health. 

Unfortunately, Louis Dupuy himself died of a lung ailment (pneumonia), which halted his plans for continued expansion of Hotel de Paris.  The land he acquired after the 1892 opera house fire is presently a public parking lot.

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