GEORGETOWN'S HOTEL DE PARIS

by Pam North

Adolphe Francois Gerard, born in France in 1844, came to the United
States in 1866 looking for new opportunities.  He joined the U.S. Army
in 1868, then deserted the following year; to escape the consequences
of his decision he then changed his name to Louis Depuy and fled to
the vastness of the American West.  He had background in both culinary
studies and writing, but ended up in Georgetown as a miner.  He was
badly injured in a mining accident in 1873, and after recovering in
the hospital, he rented Delmonico's Bakery on Alpine Street and turned
it into a first-class restaurant.  He purchased the building, along
with two adjacent ones, and began joining them together, doing most of
the work himself from the mid-1870s to 1890, turning them into a French
Provincial hotel which he named the Hotel De Paris.  

A single masonry facade gave unity to the structure, which had masonry
walls three feet thick and covered in stucco, with painted square
outlines to suggest the appearance of cut stone blocks.  On the first
floor were the kitchen, dining room, library and Depuy's living
quarters, and on the second floor were ten guest bedrooms complete
with running water and electricity.  Missing was a bar; Depuy served
only the finest French wines with his meals, ordering entire casks and
doing his own bottling.  The dining room was opulently decorated with
an alternately-striped floor of walnut and maple, walnut wainscoting
and fancy stippled plaster walls.  An indoor fountain was stocked with
live trout, a convenient way to keep them fresh, and a tank held live
lobsters.  Depuy also served steaks, Long Island Blue Point
oysters, veal and mutton, welsh rarebit, Russian caviar, apple
fritters and a variety of other dishes; Colorado game animals 
were served in Depuy's unique savory French style, and soon his
establishment was regarded as one of the finest places to enjoy a
luxurious meal.

A leader in American education and dean of Columbia University's
Teachers College, Dr. James Russell, came to Depuy's dining room in
the 1880s while on a tour of the West. The Teachers College had been
the leading institution in history for directing the path of public
education in America, and the college was advocating more practical
and useful courses for high school students.  Impressed with Depuy's
cuisine, Russell befriended Depuy, staying around long enough to learn
many of the skills and fine touches that Depuy used to turn his meals
into culinary masterpieces.  Depuy's philosphy that, "Good food leads
to well-being," influenced Russell into deciding that there should be
courses in "domestic science" offered in the nation's secondary
schools; these came to be known as "home economics," and Russell's
idea, subsequently endorsed by the Teachers College, soon was embraced
by schools across America.

By the time of Depuy's death in 1900, home economics had become part
of the curriculum of hundreds of school systems throughout the nation.
And it all started in Georgetown, Colorado.