Treasures from Our West: Photograph of Irma Hotel under construction

Originally featured in Points West magazine in Spring 2015

Readers of Points West, area residents, and visitors to Cody can hardly miss the famous Irma Hotel located in downtown Cody. Many are also familiar with this 1908 F.J. Hiscock photo of the Irma (below) from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s McCracken Research Library’s enormous historic photograph collection.

However, most have probably not seen an image of the construction project itself (above). “This is a unique panorama of the construction of the Irma Hotel, a building on the National Register of Historic Places,” writes Kathleen Broeder, the Library’s Photograph Cataloger. “Named after his daughter Irma, William F. ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody built the hotel in 1902. This particular photograph shows the barren landscape of the site and building techniques of the early twentieth century.”

The construction site of the Irma Hotel with the completed western wall braced with timbers, 1901. MS 6 William F. Cody Collection. P.6.871

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