Hotel St. Nicholas, Cripple Creek: Photographing a Mining-Era Hospital Turned Boutique Hotel

Hotel St. Nicholas sits on the hill above Cripple Creek, Colorado. It was built in 1898 as a hospital for miners during the gold rush, and today it is a small boutique hotel with Victorian lines, worn wood and a great deal of quiet character. Photographing it felt like working inside a piece of Colorado history.

A building with a past

The brick facade and long porches still read as a turn-of-the-century institution, while new owners have pared the interiors back to texture, light and simple furnishings. The challenge was to show both: the history in the bones and the calm, modern stay guests find today.

I walked the halls slowly before I set up a single light, camera in hand, letting the building tell me where to look. The things that stopped me were small: the curved fins of an old cast iron radiator catching the window light, a brass doorknob worn smooth by a century of hands, the painted number 14 glowing in the transom glass above a guest room door. Those became some of the most important frames of the whole set.

Sunrise and twilight

We photographed the exterior at both ends of the day. At sunrise the building stands crisp and grounded against the cool mountains. At twilight the windows warm up and the whole hotel glows against the hillside. Those two moods became the anchors of the set.

Rooms with texture

Inside, we used soft off-camera light to keep the old wood, plaster and fabric looking true, never glossy. Tilt-shift lenses held the Victorian geometry straight in narrow halls and stairwells.

Each room has its own wallpaper and its own mood. In one, a blue needlepoint chair sits by a tall window against dark floral paper, with the hills of Cripple Creek beyond the glass. In another, I photographed the room through an old gilt mirror, so the bed, the radiator and a carved chair appear inside the frame like a painting. The stair hall climbs beneath a ceiling of warm wood, with green striped wallpaper and a red carpet running up the steps, the kind of space where you can almost hear footsteps from another century.

From above

Aerials show how the hotel sits on its hill above town, with the mining district and the high country around it. For a hotel that sells a sense of place, that context matters as much as any room.

As twilight settled, the old brick hospital glowed against the sky with its small cupola and cross at the top of the roof. From the air, the lights of Cripple Creek spread out below the hill toward the high country, with the last pink light lying along the distant ridges. More than a century later, the building still watches over the town.

Questions we hear often

When was Hotel St. Nicholas built?

The building dates to 1898, when it opened as a hospital for miners in the Cripple Creek gold district. It now operates as a boutique hotel.

What does hotel photography include?

Exteriors at sunrise or twilight, guest rooms, common spaces, details and aerials, plus optional 3D tours and film for booking sites and social.

Do you photograph hotels outside Denver?

Yes. We photograph hotels and lodges across Colorado, from Cripple Creek to Vail and Steamboat.

See more hospitality photography, read about Tivoli Lodge in Vail, or book a shoot.

See more of our work in this part of Colorado in mountain real estate and hospitality photography.