Hotel Garber Opens in Red Cloud to Bolster Tourism and Advance Willa Cather Legacy
RED CLOUD, NE—The National Willa Cather Center celebrated the long-awaited soft opening of Hotel Garber on Friday, April 4. More than one hundred people gathered for celebratory remarks, a ribbon-cutting, open house, and self-guided tours. The occasion bookended more than eight years of planning, fundraising, and construction that helped rehabilitate an empty historic commercial building into a boutique hotel and event center.
Leaders from the National Willa Cather Center, City of Red Cloud, Red Cloud Community Fund, and Red Cloud Heritage Tourism Development began studying the feasibility of a new hotel in Red Cloud nine years ago. An economic development study had recommended that a significant expansion of local lodging options, an increased number of dining options, and an expansion of customized experiential services could significantly grow the local economy and create new jobs. Red Cloud is home to the National Willa Cather Center and hosts visitors from an average of forty states and five countries annually.
Following a market feasibility study that indicated the community could support up to a thirty room hotel, leaders opted not to acquire land and construct a modern new building. Instead, they selected the downtown 1902 Potter-Wright building for rehabilitation. The transformative adaptive reuse of the building that formerly housed retail, offices, and apartments was desirable to continue downtown revitalization efforts that spanned the last twenty plus years. An eyesore at the corner of two major intersecting highways, the Potter building had been vacant and decaying for more than twenty-five years, and its third flood was lost to fire in 1961.
Basement excavation and underpinning that was completed in 2020 supported the return of the lost third floor. After pandemic-related delays, construction resumed in 2022. Work on the building spanned more than twenty-seven months. Owing to the reconstruction of the third floor, the building’s footprint increased from 16,500 square feet to 22,500 square feet. Many architectural details and ornamental features that had been lost to fire have been replicated, including arched transoms with metal ornament above the third story windows, cornices, pilasters, and a brick parapet. The recessed front entry was restored, and original tin ceilings are also incorporated into the interior design.
The hotel's name is a nod to Silas and Lyra Garber, who served as models for Captain and Mrs. Forrester in Willa Cather’s 1923 novel A Lost Lady. Silas was a founder of Red Cloud and a two term Governor of Nebraska. Much like the character she inspired, Lyra Garber was well known for her charm and hospitality. The Garbers often hosted picnics and dances in their cottonwood grove near Red Cloud, and Willa Cather recalled these occasions in both her published work and private letters.
Now joined with the Center’s preserved Farmers and Merchants Bank next door, the two buildings share an elevator to provide visitors with access to a new permanent exhibit, Making a Place: A Long History of Red Cloud. The exhibit chronicles the history of the community, including the Pawnee tribe’s homelands, the town’s founding, and its intersections with Willa Cather’s life and art. Objects, artifacts, and photographs help highlight important milestones in Red Cloud’s history, the role of banking and finance in town-building during the late 19th Century, and the Garbers connections to Willa Cather’s life and writing.
Hotel Garber provides twenty-seven rooms for guests, including a two-bedroom two bathroom loft, a lobby with a small reading nook and library, and a spacious dining and lounge area. More than seventy historic photos of Red Cloud’s early citizens and businesses are on display in public corridors and guest rooms. A street-level stairwell has been restored for lower-level entry into the Red Cloud Creative Hub.
The Creative Hub consists of two spacious multi-purpose rooms that will provide space for readings, workshops, art classes, meetings, and residencies. A series of hands-on arts engagement classes and workshops led by local artists or artists in residence will launch in the near future. The addition of this space was envisioned to enable area residents to embrace their creativity and to help further establish Red Cloud as a destination for arts enthusiasts. Red Cloud is a Certified Creative District as designated by the Nebraska Arts Council.
As an important keystone of the collective mission to grow heritage tourism in Red Cloud around the life and literary legacy of Willa Cather, the Hotel Garber project raised more than $7 million in charitable gifts and grants. Paired with an estimated $1 million in Nebraska Historic Tax Credits, total funds secured from all sources is more than $8 million. The campaign is now within $230,000 of reaching its goal.
In the first ten years of operation, Hotel Garber is projected to add up to ten new jobs and generate $6.7 million in revenue and $800,000 in sales and lodging taxes. Recent hires include a general manager, sales and event manager, housekeeping staff, and a head chef. The hotel restaurant will include on-site offerings and will also be open to the general public by reservation when it opens next month.
Designed by the project team of Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture and constructed by Tru-Built Construction, this project was made possible by gifts from many generous individuals and foundations. These private gifts helped leverage grant awards from the Nebraska Department of Economic Development and the Nebraska Arts Council. Reservations can now be made at HotelGarber.com. The hotel is also a featured stop on this year’s Nebraska Passport program.
Learn more about the Hotel Garber project
—All gallery images, below, are courtesy of the Nebraska Community Foundation—
