The Old Library Room

Summary: Secluded queen room on the first floor with 19th-century furniture and antique books from a local estate. High ceilings and tall windows provide ambiance. Cable HDTV with internet apps, including Netflix. Small refrigerator with freezer. Private en suite bathroom with two sink vanities, jetted tub/shower, and water closet.

Features: The Old Library is perhaps our most private guest room, and the only bedroom on the ground floor. (Though there are a half-dozen steps from street level on the porch, the home can be accessed stair-free through the dining room.) The furnishings honor the room’s original purpose: a nine-foot-tall barrister bookcase filled with Victorian-era volumes towers over the space, and law books from the early 20th century are stacked in the corners. A three-piece matching bedroom set made from solid walnut and pink marble fill out the room. Made in the 1880s, the furniture was brought to Deadwood by wagon by Hank Frawley, a local rancher, lawyer, and businessman. The water closet features an extra-large pull-chain toilet, and the tub in the bathroom is jetted. This is one of two rooms in the house with a small closet suitable for hanging clothes. There’s a small internet-connected cable HDTV. The bedroom has the home’s original fir floors and trim, while the bathroom has a laminate floor. 

Light: The windows face west and north, and get very little sunlight in the morning. The room does get direct light in the late afternoon and early evening before the sun goes down behind the surrounding mountains, but the covered porch on both sides helps to shade the room.

History: When H.B. Wardman built the home in 1899, this room was constructed as his personal library. At the time, the rear window had views of downtown Deadwood. While trees and lilac bushes have since grown in and obscure the view, the stone cupola and green roof of the 1908 Lawrence County Courthouse can sometimes be glimpsed from here. Otherwise, the windows overlook neighboring houses on the downhill side and a grassy meadow behind the home. Deer often graze here at dusk and dawn, and wild turkeys can sometimes be spotted in the fall and winter. The water closet is original to the house, but the pull-chain toilet inside is a reproduction. The rest of the bathroom was an addition constructed in the mid 1920s, when the home was used as a boarding house.