By Tom Collins

On July 14, 1900 a roaring fire raged through Whiskey Row and Gurley Street, destroying Prescott’s most cherished business buildings. Ironically, the magnificent $60,000 hotel on the southwest corner of Montezuma and Gurley Streets, advertised proudly as Prescott’s only “fireproof” hotel, collapsed into smoking rubble along with the Palace Saloon, the Bashford-Burmister Company mercantile store as well as many others businesses. The hotel had stood for nearly eleven years as one of the architectural gems of Yavapai County.

Samuel Eason Patton, the architect, was born about 1851 in Pennsylvania. He settled in Phoenix in 1879 as Chief Clerk of the Military Telegraph Office. In late 1881, he resigned this position and entered into business as a contractor and builder. The Maricopa County Court House and the County Hospital, both of his design, were touted as the finest in the Territory. He also built extensive infantry quarters at Fort McDowell in 1883. He became Master Mason of the Masonic Lodge of Phoenix and also C.C. of the Knights of Pythias. Architectural prospects eventually lured him to Prescott. In the year 1890, Patton designed an elegant, 42-bedroom hotel to be built in Prescott for entrepreneur Dennis A. Burke and his business partner, Michael J. Hickey.

Burke (1859-1918), a 5-foot 5½-inch New Yorker, arrived in Prescott in 1878 and worked as an accountant and chief clerk for the Quartermaster General at Fort Whipple. He was discharged as a Private, with a character rating of “excellent” on October 16, 1882 and entered into the business world in Prescott. At the Sacred Heart Catholic Church on January 4, 1883 he married Jennie Murphy, an Irish nanny who had come to Fort Whipple with Colonel Benjamin’s family.

Hickey (1853-1910), an Irish immigrant, decided to cross the ocean at age twelve to New York and at age 17, seized with gold fever, made his way to California to engage in prospecting. He continued his quest for gold in the Arizona Territory in 1879 and first located at Tombstone, where he worked in the Grand Silver Mine for a year. From there he journeyed to the Tiptop mine near Black Canyon City and engaged in prospecting and mining for four years. In 1883, he arrived in Prescott and became, according to “A Historical and Biographical Record of the Territory of Arizona” (1896), “quite popular as a genial, whole-souled man.” He was appointed deputy sheriff three separate times, first under Jacob Henkle, then M. J. Mulvenon, and later Buckey O’Neill. He established a record for bravery and fearlessness in the discharge of his duties in capturing desperadoes like D. W. Dilda and Sisto Lucero. “He is a liberal-hearted, public-spirited citizen, who has great hopes of Arizona’s future and who contributes liberally of his means to all worthy enterprises.” On Thanksgiving Day 1887, he married Miss Catharine Wall, a native of Canada.

Burke and Hickey purchased two lots on the southwest corner of Montezuma and Gurley Streets and hired Mr. Patton to design a two-story hotel with a striking turret. Construction proceeded speedily and the $40,000 Burke Hotel opened to great acclaim on New Year’s Day, 1891. The bedrooms were “single and en suite,” each furnished “in the latest styles.” It was billed as the “Finest, Largest, and Best Appointed Hotel in Northern Arizona,” replete with “Splendid Furniture, an Excellent Kitchen, Convenient Commercial Sample Rooms, Good Attendance, Fine Billiard Hall, the Best of Liquors and Cigars.” According to Burke and Hickey, it was “unsurpassed by any hotel between Kansas City and San Francisco.” The rates in 1891 were $2.50 and $3.00 per day.

The hotel immediately became THE place to stay for political and theatrical celebrities. In March 1891, for example, the entire McFadden’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Company lodged there for three nights. Mining magnates and cattlemen held their meetings there, and dignitaries from southern Arizona as well as other states booked it regularly. Among the more distinguished guests were Thomas and Anna Fitch in July, 1894. Mr. Fitch was known as the “Silver-Tongued Orator of the Pacific” and his wife was a published poet and novelist. They had resided in Prescott from 1877 to 1880, were good friends with John and Jessie Fremont, founded the Prescott Dramatic Society and built the Prescott Theatre. Fitch was a colorful and noteworthy lawyer and lived in Tombstone at the time of the legendary “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” in 1881 where he was the brilliant defense lawyer for the Earp brothers, saving them from the gallows. Fitch roomed at the Hotel Burke again in October of 1896 when he came to Prescott to deliver a rousing one hour and fifty-minute oration on October 15th for the Republican rally in support of William McKinley for President.

An incident at the hotel in late June 1891 started tongues wagging in Prescott. According to the Miner newspaper on July 1st: “Quite a lively scene was enacted around the Hotel Burke Saturday night when Ex-Chief Justice Wright, threatened to kill Adjutant General Gill. As Gill started to walk back to the rear of the room to sit down, Wright attempted to draw his revolver, but was prevented by a bystander. Finally, Sheriff Lowry disarmed the judge, but he continued his abusive language until he was arrested and taken to jail, where he remained all that night” An Ex-Chief Justice in jail in Prescott was the talk of the town. Wright’s grievance remains unknown, but he was charged with carrying concealed weapons.

By 1892, the Burke’s elegant lobby was becoming a venue for weddings, which, at that time, were more typically held in residences and only occasionally in churches. Rev. A. C. Allen performed the marriage rites there for George Helm of Curtiss and Miss Katie Knoepper of Prescott in October of that year.

In October 1893, the Burke’s proprietors hired Mrs. John Durning and Miss Emma Bergheart to take charge of the dining room. They came from Vanderbilt, California, where they had run a well-known and popular boarding house. “These ladies come highly recommended, both as first-class hotel people and honorable business people. They should be patronized and encouraged.” Later, in February 1899, the hotel’s ads reassured customers that it “employs none but white help in the kitchen,” a reflection of the Territory’s lingering racism. Some hotels and restaurants had been more inclusive in their hiring practices. In addition, any fears of room invasion were quelled by the hiring of a night watchman. It was truly Prescott’s Finest.

(In Part II, more stories of the Hotel Burke and its expansion, development, destruction, and re-building.)

(Tom Collins, a Professor Emeritus of Theatre, is the author of “Stage-Struck Settlers in the Sun-Kissed Land,” a history of the amateur theatre in Territorial Prescott. He is a volunteer in the archives at Sharlot Hall Museum.)

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(buh7020p and Jules Baumann 1891 drawing) Reuse only by permission.

The elegant Hotel Burke, shown here c.1891, was located on the southwest corner of Gurley and Montezuma Streets at the location of the present-day Hotel St. Michael.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(bui161pc) Reuse only bypermission.

The Burke Hotel dining room, c.1890s, with Hedrick D. Aitken, local theater manager and actor sitting alone at the left, front table.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(po2379pa and po1356pa) Reuse only by permission.
Hotel Burke proprietors Dennis A. Burke and Michael J. Hickey. In the photo to the left, in 1903, Burke, then Mayor of Prescott, is shown at the train station with William Randolph Hearst (holding the flag) during his Congressional swing through the West. The portrait to the right is Mr. Hickey, c.1880s.