A 1914 Beaux-Arts train hall converted to a 112-room hotel in 2014 — staff and guests describe travelers who never left, including a three-fingered man still pacing the Great Hall
1701 Wynkoop St, Denver, CO 80202
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Hotel room rates vary; check thecrawfordhotel.com for current pricing
Access
Wheelchair OK
Fully accessible historic train station with modern hotel infrastructure; elevator access throughout
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1914 · Original Denver Union Depot opened 1881 as tallest building in the West · 1894 electrical fire destroyed central hall; rebuilt 1914 in Beaux-Arts style · World War II transfer hub serving 50,000+ daily visitors at peak · $54 million restoration 2014; Crawford Hotel converted from office spaces · Listed on National Register of Historic Places
Denver Union Station opened on June 1, 1881, anchoring the Lower Downtown district that had grown up around the city's rail hub. The building measured 500 feet across with a central 180-foot clock tower constructed in pink rhyolite stone — locally quarried volcanic rock — with Manitou sandstone above the windows. At the time of opening it was the tallest structure in the American West.
On March 18, 1894, an electrical fire tore through the central hall and destroyed the clock tower, leaving only the flanking wings. Rather than demolish the remnants, the Union Depot and Railroad Company commissioned architects Gove & Walsh to construct a new central section in the Beaux-Arts style, incorporating the surviving Romanesque Revival wings. The rebuilt station opened in 1914, exactly as Denver was becoming a transfer hub for the transcontinental rail network. The Great Hall's carved granite, arched windows, and terrazzo floors established the aesthetic still visible today.
At its peak in the mid-1940s the station received more than 50,000 visitors daily, many of them military families during World War II. Denver's role as a rail gateway made the station a site of extended separations and uncertain reunions during that period. Passenger traffic declined sharply after the war, and by the 1980s the building had slipped into disrepair.
Preservation advocate Dana Crawford initiated a redevelopment plan in 2001. The Union Station Alliance completed a $54 million restoration, reopening the building in 2014 — 100 years after the 1914 Beaux-Arts reconstruction. The Crawford Hotel, named for Dana Crawford's contributions to the project, occupies the converted office spaces on the third and fourth floors. The hotel's 112 rooms include Pullman-inspired guest rooms referencing the building's railroad heritage. The original blueprints are displayed in a stairway between floors three and four.
Sources
The most durable legend attached to Denver Union Station involves a man missing two fingers on one hand — described in multiple independent accounts as appearing on the train platforms and moving through the lobby toward the ticket windows, where he would tap on the glass before vanishing. The figure was associated with the old depot's operational period, and accounts place his death at or near the station roughly a century before the building's recent renovation. Workers and ticket agents in earlier decades reported his appearances with enough regularity that the story became part of the institutional memory of the site. Reports of the three-fingered man subsided after the 2014 renovation.
A second figure — a girl in clothing described as 19th-century — has been reported in the Great Hall moving through the space and singing softly. The original 1881 depot housed a clock tower that was destroyed in the 1894 fire; some versions of the account associate the girl with that earlier structure, though no documented death or incident provides a historical anchor for the claim.
During the 2001–2014 restoration, construction workers in sealed-off sections reported footsteps and voices in areas where no one else should have been present. These accounts surfaced in local press coverage of the renovation project. The Crawford Hotel's own blog has engaged with the paranormal reputation of the building in general terms without endorsing specific claims.
The building's wartime role — as a site of tens of thousands of departures and arrivals daily during World War II, many involving families uncertain whether they would see each other again — provides an emotional weight to the space that the ghost narratives have tended to absorb and reflect.
Notable Entities
The Crawford Hotel occupies the third and fourth floors of the restored Union Station building, with 112 rooms and suites ranging from Pullman-inspired rooms to LoDo Suites. The Great Hall, Cooper Lounge mezzanine bar, and train platforms below are accessible to guests at all hours — all reported areas of paranormal activity.
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