Can you name a building in Denver that’s older than the state Capitol, was one of the first fire proof buildings in the country and has hosted almost every U.S. president since Teddy Roosevelt? Here’s a hint: Its 125th birthday is this weekend.

Yep, we’re talking about Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel.

The anniversary celebration kicks off Aug. 10 and runs through the weekend. But before the festivities begin, now is a good time to take a trip down memory lane with one of Denver’s most iconic buildings.

The Birth Of The Brown Palace

Henry C. Brown, with architect Frank E. Edbrooke, built the Brown Palace Hotel in 1892. Both had a hand in the construction of the state Capitol building as well.

With the arrival of the railroads in the 1870s, Denver was often thought of as the center of the Rocky Mountain Empire with 17th Street being “the Wall Street of the West.” The Brown Palace wasn’t at the center of the action — at first.

“There were a lot of really rather grand hotels already in Denver, but they were all down at the other end of 17th Street kind of clustered around Union Station,” Brown Palace Historian Debra Faulkner told Colorado Matters in 2013. “But with the Capitol going up they sensed a need for something grand much closer to that.”

The Brown Palace was designed to be a completely fire proof building. Instead of wood, it has a skeleton structure made up of iron, steel and concrete. The building was also equipped with a 700-feet deep artesian well that supplies every drop of water in the hotel, even the water in the toilets.