Hotel Libby receives grant to restore part of grand staircase
<p>Hotel Libby owner Gail Burger points toward the staircase.</p>
Hotel Libby received last week the first of three grants it is pursuing as it continues its renovation project for a 2017 reopening, Project Manager Gail Burger said Friday.
The grant, from the Montana History Foundation, provides $2,156 in funds to restore some of the stairs from the front desk.
“This will take care of the first 13, up to the first landing of the grand staircase,” Burger said. “It’s the first of three we applied for just about the same time.”
Burger said the other grants are earmarked for roof repair and the third to replace a beam in the basement of the 114-year-old hotel.
Burger said the renovation, which she hopes to conclude by the summer of 2017, will cost an estimated $3.7 million.
In September, Burger received notification from the National Park Service that Hotel Libby had been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, making it a protected property and available for renovation and rehabilitation grants.
This acknowledgement had been two years in the making, and included six binders of documents, historical research, photos, applications and requirements show how much Burger put into just this step of the process to reopen and make commercially viable the old hotel.
On Friday, Burger allowed a brief tour of the hotel, showing off some smartly painted new rooms and boasted about the impending arrival of two chandeliers.
“We’re expecting them any day,” Burger said. “We were kind of thinking they might come today.”
The fresh paint with sea-green walls were accented with a blue-green wainscoting below.
“We want to restore it to what it was in the 1930s,” Burger said. “Before that, there was no paint on the outside. It was all rough wood.”
Burger said plans are to restore the old boardwalk out in front of the building as well.
Hotel Libby originally was called the Coram, named for its owner, J.A. Coram.