Listed
as one of the "7 Best Bed and Breakfasts"
in
Montana and Wyoming
2007 Frommer's Guide "Where
to Stay" - Bozeman
"Julius Lehrkind was never much of a conformist. The
Swiss-born brewer wanted to live next door to his workplace,
so he shunned the tonier neighborhoods on Bozeman's south
side and in 1897 built a stately Queen Anne mansion right
next door to his brick brewery.
Former national park rangers Jon Gerster, Jr. and Chris
Nixon turned "the house that beer built" into
a bed-and-breakfast 99 years after the Lehrkind family moved
in, with the original woodwork, plumbing, and floor plan
intact. The ornate abode still sticks out in the quasi-industrial
(but up-and-coming) Historic Brewery District.
Surrounded by breweries that are slated to become lofts
and other vestiges of the neighborhood's beery past, the
Lehrkind Mansion looks like something out of a fairy tale
inside and out. Gerster and Nixon have done a remarkable
job capturing the house in 1890s amber: Everything, from
the rare 1897 Regina music box in the parlor, to the many
original fixtures in the bathrooms to the amazingly preserved
original carpet in the Muir Room, is from Lehrkind's day.
In 2004, the mansion got a new neighbor; a Victorian farmhouse,
abandoned outside of town until Gerster and Nixon go the
idea of gussying it up and making it a five-bedroom counterpart
to the four-bedroom mansion. Next on the list is a tunnel
between the two, just like the one Julius Lehrkind used
to commute to his brewry a century ago." |
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