Rohling Inn history

GCN Staff

Standing through more than a century of change

1/27/2005 - The calamity that befell the Rohling Inn last Friday threatens to rob Black Hawk of one of the most significant buildings in its 140-year history. 

  An early photograph of the town shows the building under construction in the summer of 1864, the year the town of Black Hawk was officially chartered by the still-new Territory of Colorado. On December 9th of that year, the Central City Daily Miner’s Register noted: “The new block erected this summer by Mr. Ettien and Messrs. Atkinson & Woodbury is an ornament to the place, and would be to any place in the territory. Mr. Ettien’s is twenty-five feet front by 80 feet deep, and has a cellar and second story. That of Mr. Atkinson & Woodbury is of the same height, but narrower and sixty feet long. Mr. Ettien occupies the whole... It makes decidedly the finest storeroom in the territory, and when the cellar is taken into consideration it is the largest, not excepting that of  Stebbins & Porter in Denver. One department will be devoted exclusively to clothing and gentleman’s furnishing goods, while the larger room will be occupied as a grocery and dry goods sales room. The cellar is already filled with liquors and other merchandise.  Notwithstanding the immense size of his rooms, he informs us that he expected to be compelled to store his flour and other bulky goods in his old warehouse. He expects to purchase next summer a half million dollars worth of goods, and in that case he will be second to no mercantile in the territory. Messers Atkinson & Woodbury erected the building.”

  Benjamin Woodbury, who was the architect and builder, was one of early Black Hawk’s most prominent citizens. Well-known for his building skills, Woodbury moved from Maine with wife Sarah apparently sometime after 1860. He was hired by the City to do remodeling work (probably in the wooden building that served as the first Gilpin Hotel) for use as school rooms, built the City’s first ballot boxes, and worked on the public well, the City “lock-up,” and the first real school building, built in 1870. He was elected Black Hawk’s fifth mayor in April of 1869, and was re-elected the following year.

  David Ettien, who actually operated the business, was listed as first owner of the business with George W. Clayton, a young miner from Illinois who was one of the original Gilpin County pioneers mentioned in the 1860 survey of the gold camps. Apparently Ettien was successful enough to buy out his partner, and upon his death in, 1878, the property passed on to his wife, Mary. 

  Throughout the period a variety of stores occupied the lower half of the building, which was commonly referred to as “Ettien’s Block.” In 1871, for example, there was “Conant & Allen, Dealers in Dry Goods, Groceries, Hardware, &c.;”  in 1878, Charles Floyd’s tailor shop took up one of the bays. 

  The upstairs rooms were often let as private residences, despite their proximity to the railroad trestle that spanned Gregory Street when the railroad was extended to Central City in 1878. Among the most famous of the residents was a certain Harvey Doe and his young bride, Elizabeth McCourt Doe. The couple divorced shortly thereafter, and “Baby” Doe fled to Leadville for a meeting with silver magnate H.A.W. Tabor that would change Colorado history, and become the stuff of legend, books, and even an opera. 

  In the 1880’s, the building acquired its most noted owners, a pair of German immigrant brothers, August and Phillip Rohling. 

  J.H. Phillip Rohling was the older of the brothers, born in 1850 in Dielinger, Westphalia. He emigrated to the New World in 1867 and took work in a dry goods store in Indianapolis. A few years later his younger brother August H., born in 1859, joined him there. But it was the younger August who was infected with wanderlust, and he moved to the frontier gold camp of Black Hawk in 1867.

  August took employment with one of Black Hawk’s most famous merchants, Alexander Rittmaster. Rittmaster was a refugee from Polish Russia who arrived in Gilpin County in 1865.  His shop in Black Hawk was one of just several he operated in the mountain towns, and he employed many of his relatives from “the old country” who later became prominent in Colorado Jewish circles.

  Apparently young August Rohling learned well from the older merchant (Rittmaster was born in 1830), and by 1882 felt confident enough to purchase stock (with his brother) to go into business for himself. Phillip came out to Colorado soon after, and the two quickly established themselves as among Gilpin County’s leading merchants. 

  Despite their success, August still felt a need to move on, and after the brothers opened a store in Ft. Collins in 1892, August moved there in 1896. He had been involved with the City during his nearly 30 years as a Black Hawk resident, serving on City Council and the school board, and marrying a Johanna Rudolph in 1879. She later died, and he married June Stephenson.

  But it was Phillip who sank his roots more deeply, and who was more closely associated with the building. After his marriage to Louisa Witthoft in Indianapolis, the couple raised six children in Black Hawk: Louisa, John P., Agnes, Annie, Laura, and Phillip Jr.

  Like most merchants in “The Little Kingdom of Gilpin,” Rohling was financially interested in mining properties. He bought the old Prospect mine, later known as the Chemung Belmont on Bobtail Hill, as well as the Hattie Mine. He was a director of Rocky Mountain National Bank in Central City. He was a leader in the People's party, and a member of the local Knights of Pythias and the Black Hawk Presbyterian Church. Finally, he was elected Mayor in 1895, serving until 1897.

  Throughout the period, the business thrived: in 1900, large ads in the local paper boasted that “Santa Claus has established headquarters with Phil Rohling at Black Hawk...the largest stock of toys in Gilpin County.”

  The business was still in operation as late as 1918, but the First World War virtually ruined the Gilpin County gold mining industry. With the population in decline and the business community moribund, the building reverted to the City of Black Hawk in 1921. Joe Borzago, whose “corner grocery” in the building that later housed the Black Hawk Post Office was one of the few businesses to survive the Depression years, purchased the building in 1929, but its glory days were long behind it.

  The building continued to serve multiple purposes, both for retail and residential users. A 1950’s photograph on display at Black Hawk City Hall shows that the lower floors at that time boasted a movie theater, then showing John Wayne’s Hit the Beach. A laundry operated in the west half of the building, while the upstairs was apparently still let out for rooming. Long-time residents still recall the spacious east bay being used for amateur theatrical productions in the 1960s and 70s. 

  Like most Black Hawk buildings, the Rohling Block changed hands several times with the coming of limited-stakes gaming in 1990. After a failed effort to operate as a bed and breakfast establishment, it became part of the Lorenz family’s group of properties.  Bill Lorenz, like Benjamin Woodbury and Phillip Rohling before him, had served as Black Hawk mayor before being forced to resign when he became involved in the casino industry. Like Rohling a German immigrant, Bill and his wife Kay had operated the famous Black Forest Inn just up Gregory Street since the 1940s, winning national recognition for their German cuisine. 

  Purchased by Fitzgeralds from the Lorenz family, the building is one of several historic buildings slated for incorporation into the ongoing Fitzgeralds expansion.

  Physically, the building was little changed from its appearance in 1864. Its asymmetrical front is nonetheless graciously balanced, with five arched windows on the lower level and six above, all with keystones and radiating voussoirs. The cellar was recently “discovered” during the Black Hawk storm sewer project that probably contributed to the building’s partial collapse. The building has stood as a reminder of the continuity of the City itself, through more than a century of change, and its loss would be a tragedy. 

  Information obtained from Black Hawk: the rise and fall of a Colorado mill town by Roger Baker.