Taking a walk through Historic Hotel Libby

For the owners of Hotel Libby, the ongoing renovations are an effort of love and dedication, but one with no clear end in site and financial hurdles yet to overcome.

Showing in the National Register of Historic Places as the Coram Hotel, Hotel Libby is one of six buildings in Lincoln County on the register. Others include Libby High School and the Troy Jail.

The lobby is open and in use for local gatherings and small events — the capacity is 49 people — and the old caretaker quarters remain in use by the Burger family, said owner Gail Burger.

Their most recent renovation is the first flight of the grand staircase, which they were able to restore without replacing anything, she said.

As with every step along the way, the next renovation is uncertain.

One likely candidate is roof repair, but that will take money, and Burger is still working on a grant, she said. With such a large and costly project, even a small portion can be a major endeavor.

“We’re just continuing until we’re done,” Burger said.

Burger said she and her husband moved down from Alaska to take over restorations about six years ago.

“I had a time frame when we first got down here, and I was like ‘five years,’’ she said. “I was wrong.”

The goal for the hotel is to restore it to what it might have looked like in the 1930s, Burger said. She wants to go beyond requirements for historic status that the common areas look period.

Her plan includes some modern amenities such as flat screen TVs, but would hide them to appear like oil paintings when not in use, she said. They will also have small bathrooms with provisions for bathing, an amenity not all guests would have enjoyed in the 1930s.

Walking through the three stories of the mostly empty building, Burger describes down to the details of room decor the vision she has to restore the historic Libby landmark.

On the first floor, she wants to restore the original dining room and install a commercial kitchen, she said. In the front, she wants to even put the front wall and doors to how they appeared in photographs from the 1930s, including nine-pane ceiling-to-floor windows.

She talks about discoveries of where walls used to be, or the walk-throughs between rooms to make suites that were covered up by walls.

When Burger’s parents bought the property 33 years ago, her father found a loose panel in a hallway upstairs, she said. Behind that panel was a completely furnished room.

Burger said she plans to show off as many of the stories about the hotel as she can.

In one room there is a hole in the floor where, legend has it, a man who had robbed the grocery store hid his loot. Burger talked about covering the hole with a piece of Plexiglas and having a money bag in it with a sign about the story.

The story itself may just be a legend, she said. Yet, it’s still a fun story.

Though the three Roy Porter murals in the lobby date to the 1950s rather than the 1930s, Burger said she plans to keep all of them.

One will likely be relocated to the grand staircase, but with so few of the murals still remaining in Libby, Burger said she feels the historical significance outweighs the fact they aren’t from the 1930s.

How long the work may all take, Burger said she doesn’t know. The “bones” of the building remain solid, but much of the building was stripped to the bones by the EPA when they were looking for asbestos.

“This is my world. This is all consuming,” Burger said. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

One of the first buildings in Libby, the original hotel was opened 117 years ago, she said. Before it opened, back before it even had walls, it was used for town meetings.

“I get to live in it, and I get to do this stuff,” she said. “And my granddaughter, she comes over and she dusts and she’s not afraid of anything in here — obviously we don’t turn her loose, she’s two — and then this will be hers someday.”

Burger said she likes to think about all the people who have stayed in the hotel over the years, from New York families traveling with nannies to loggers heading out to work in the cork boots that left marks on the hotel’s floors.

“It’s always been a pillar of Libby,” she said. “I just think it’s awesome.”