Lake Hotel in Yellowstone turns 125 on Wednesday/Kurt Repanshek

Editor's note: Lake Hotel at Yellowstone National Park turns 125 on Wednesday. Christine Barnes, author of books on the Great Lodges of the National Parks in the United States and Canada, takes a look at this grand old dame in the following article. Lake Hotel is featured in Great Lodges of the National Parks, Volume Two. All of Ms. Barnes' titles can be viewed at www.greatlodges.com.

Think Yellowstone National Park and Old Faithful Inn comes to mind. The wildly exotic, pitched roof, shingle-covered Inn screamed Wild West when it opened in 1904. It remains so.

But on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, stands the stately, Colonial revival, butter-yellow and white Lake Hotel. Where Old Faithful Inn is surrounded by the frenzy of spewing geysers, bubbling mud pots, tour buses and a hubbub of excitement, at Lake Hotel, located in the center of the park, there remains a sense of calm.

This is what the architect of both hotels, Robert Reamer, had in mind when he designed Old Faithful Inn then tackled the upgrade of the then simple Lake Hotel from bland to beautiful: The yin and yang of this country’s first national park interpreted by manmade structures meant to house and inspire guests.

When the technically untrained architect from Ohio came to the park to work for Harry Child, of the Yellowstone Park Association, Child gave Reamer the opportunity to build what was in his mind’s eye. Reamer did not have a vision, he had dozens of visions. In addition to the two hotels, in his first year at the park, he tallied up eight major projects including railway depots, general stores and lunch stations.

At Lake Hotel, Reamer turned from the quirky and rustic design of Old Faithful Inn to transforming the three-and-one-half-story clapboard Lake Hotel into its elegant reincarnation and the largest hotel in the park. The same man who envisioned the soaring Inn’s roof with gnarled lodge pole pine details and massive 40-foot stone fireplace was creating a silk purse in the grand hotel tradition from the proverbial sow’s ear that had served guests since 1891.

The hotel with its port cochere/NPS, Jim Peaco

The 1903 renovation and addition of Lake Hotel was just the first in a series of changes Reamer oversaw that included the addition of a port cochere to shelter automobiles cruising in to drop off guests, additional guest wings, interior detailing and the U-shaped, window-flanked sunroom offering lake views. After the formation of the National Park Service in 1916, Stephen Mather, the NPS’s first director, and his team sent forth a ream of recommendations for upgrades. Reamer’s Lake Hotel work kept pace, and between 1923-34 removed and repurposed portions of the hotel, added guest wings along with a huge elegant dining room, designed furniture and handmade fireplace and water fountain tiles (the Bachelder tiles remain) just some of those additions.

And while visitors swarmed to the park, serious outside forces impacted the parks and its hotels. Lake Hotel was closed during World War I, the Great Depression, and again during World War II, left empty to weather the elements. When Lake Hotel reopened after WWII, it was in sad shape.

Breakfast in the elegant hotel's dining room is decidedly casual/Kurt Repanshek

Finally, in 1979 the National Park Service purchased all assets from the floundering Yellowstone Park Company, cancelled its contract, and set about finding new concession operators. The first phase of upgrades happened in the 1980s, but maintaining these hotels is ongoing. In 1995, Xanterra Parks & Resorts (then known as TW Recreation Services) took over operation of the park’s facilities.

Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2015, the hotel is all spiffed up after a two-year, $28-million renovation that began in 2014 and took it from a tired bit of history into a swanky refuge. That renovation transformed the hotel into more of the “retreat” as was originally intended. Suites with elegant linens and accessories, fine dining, renovation and historic restoration of the entire main hotel, gives couples the opportunity for perhaps a more non-family experience.

As the National Park Service celebrates its centennial this summer, it is important to recognize National Historic Landmarks that both define rustic park architecture, as with Old Faithful Inn, and those that offer traditional alternatives of the era such as Lake Hotel. Here on the shores of Yellowstone Lake stands an exquisite reminder of the elegance of another time set in the wilds of Yellowstone National Park.

On May 13, a host of free public events are scheduled to pay homage to the 125th anniversary of the hotel. 

Down below the hotel there's a sitting area where you can take in Yellowstone Lake with Mount Sheridan off in the distance/Kurt Repanshek