Louis Dupuy, a Frenchman from Alençon, built this hotel with its two-foot-thick rubblestone walls, plastered and painted to look like ashlar stone. In 1875 Dupuy opened the small Delmonico Bakery (today's dining room) and later acquired two adjacent storefronts and made additions to the back. The fronts are skillfully tied together with a dentiled and bracketed cornice, wrought iron railing, and windows hooded with elaborate flattened arches. Although the marble busts of Molière and Voltaire are gone, a statue of justice and a soldered zinc lion and seated stag still guard the 10-foot-high stone wall around the very early outdoor cafe.

After Dupuy's death, it was learned that he was Adolphe François Gérard, a deserter from the U.S. army. His hotel has been owned since the 1950s by the Colorado chapter of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America and operated as a museum. The Dames found in “French Louis's” ample wine cellar boxes of twenty-eight different fine French wine labels that could be applied to bottles filled locally. The well-preserved interior with its library and salons features walnut wood-work and alternating light maple and dark walnut floor boards.