The Place:
Built circa 1904 as the Elite Hotel, the Murray has housed tourists and celebrities alike over the years. Though it fell into decline with the decline of railroad travel in the 1960s, it has since been revived and remains a popular local rendezvous place and watering hole. I'll let them relate some of the story of the hotel...
Our Place in History
Since its grand opening in 1904, the Murray Hotel’s guest registry has been more like a who’s who of history and Hollywood. Celebrities such as Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane have graced the threshold of what was once “the” elegant railroad hotel. The Murray was also home to Walter Hill, son of railroad tycoon, James J. Hill. More recently, colorful personalities like motion picture director, Sam Peckinpah, rented what had been the
largest suite in the place, built originally for an heir to the Burlington railroad fortune.
The Queen of Denmark once spent the night, but her impressions went unrecorded. Humorist Will Rogers and his buddy Walter Hill, must have been satisfied. They liked the place well enough they tried to bring a favorite saddle horse to a third floor suite, via the hand-cranked,
1905 Otis elevator.
To this day, Livingston attracts a steady stream of writers, musicians, and movie stars.
Like any good hotel, the Murray has a personality of its own, a thing as tangible and real as its marble stairways, yet as hard to define as music or an aroma.
Think about it. When you check into a motel, you wonder if the TV works. When you check into a hotel, you wonder who you might see there. At the Murray Hotel in Livingston, Montana, it could be almost anybody. Celebrities have been stopping here for 90 years, sharing space and rubbing elbows with the cowpokes, railroaders, and other travelers that provide a hotel’s life blood.
The Murray Hotel occupies 4 floors with
30 rooms or suites.
From the Murray Hotel
The Person:
When the hotel was increased from two storeys to four, the expansion was financed by future Democratic U.S. Senator James E. Murray. Canadian born on May 3, 1876, Murray moved to Butte, MT to live with a wealthy uncle in 1897. After graduating with a law degree from New York University in 1900, he was admitted to the bar in 1901 and began a law practise in Butte. In 1906 was elected to a single term as Silver Bow County attorney, thereafter returning to his practice. Reentering politics in the early 1930s, he was elected senator on the platform of complete support for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Senator Murray remained in office until January 3, 1961, dying in Butte less than three months later. He is interred in Butte's Holy Cross Cemetery.
In 1943 Murray was once characterized as:
...a millionaire lawyer who tries to outdo [Burton K.] Wheeler as a champion of small business and labour against big business monopoly (e.g., the Anaconda Company which dominates his copper-producing State). An advocate of the second front and of stronger ties with Britain. A free trader except on copper issues. A Roman Catholic.
From Wiki
After financing the expansion of the
Elite Hotel in 1922, the Murray family foreclosed on the owner, Josephine Kline, in 1925, renaming the building the
Murray Hotel, for the Senator, the name it continues to carry today. The foreclosure was contested by Kline well into the 1930s, but to no avail.