The Historic Plaza Hotel

230 Plaza

Las Vegas, NM 87701

505-425-3591

Visitors to Las Vegas, NM can’t help but hear the history whispering from the stones, bricks, mortar and adobe of our historic buildings, over 900 of which are on the National Register of Historic Places.

One of the spots in town where the past is the most alive and accessible is at the Historic Plaza Hotel. Built on the Northwest corner of the town Plaza in 1882, the Italianate-style structure houses a casual Victorian dining room where you can taste local cuisine, Byron T’s Saloon which features live local entertainment most Friday and Saturday nights and often has a ‘real’ cowboy or two perched on a barstool, the Ilfeld Ballroom which can cater conferences, banquets and, of course, features entertainment and dances, and lovely guest rooms with historic décor and ambiance.

The hotel hasn’t always been as vibrant as it is today. After the boom days associated with the arrival of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad in 1879 went bust, the original hotel known as the “Belle of the Southwest,” and the adjacent “Great Emporium” of merchant Charles Ilfeld fell into disrepair.

This year William Slick, hotel owner, received two “Lifetime Achievement” awards in Historic Preservation – one from the New Mexico Preservation Alliance and another from the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division in large part for his work at the Plaza Hotel. Slick’s has been with the hotel from 1982, when the original Plaza Hotel was restored to its former glory, through the 2009 renovation of the adjacent Ilfeld building.

“What happens in a historic renovation like this is that you can put together the best of two centuries – the best of the nineteenth century and the twenty-first century,” says Slick, known to locals as Wid. “The original hotel could offer a restaurant, lounge and 37 historic rooms, but it was limited in what it could do and by adding the second end of the ‘bookends’ 30 years later, we are now truly full service with 71 rooms and where we can host weddings, conferences and live entertainment such as dances, comedy shows – they’re trying to talk me into having the Chippendales here.”

Slick may not have served up a dashing dish of parading man flesh – yet – but he has given Las Vegas residents and tourists a chance to experience the elegance, ghostly mystery, and beauty of a time almost forgotten.