A bloodshot glass eye is on display at the historic Colorado Springs hotel, and it has a story to tell

By Eric Peterson

Spencer “Speck” Penrose had an eye for luxury. After a failed attempt to buy the Antlers Hotel in downtown Colorado Springs, he found an enviable spot a few miles to the southwest and established the perennially five-star Broadmoor Hotel in 1918.

He also had an eye for drinking. Literally.

Penrose possessed a glass eye adorned with decorative bloodshot. He would swap it out with a capillary-free one the morning after he imbibed, which is said to be often.

A college rowing accident injured his left eye, and Penrose was later outfitted with a glass replacement. Kohler and Danz of New York made his first eye, clear but ill-fitting. Penrose complained in a letter, “If I am not very careful, the eye turns upside-down.”

In 1927, he commissioned his bloodshot glass eye as a drinking accessory from a Dr. Bruneau in Paris for 400 francs. It was apparently a better fit, Penrose wrote, “but sometimes it seems small.”

As the legend goes, the bloodshot prosthetic went missing after Penrose’s passing in 1939. That was until it was found a few years ago rattling around an old desk. After it was polished, the eye found a new home in the lobby of the Broadmoor Main, in an engraved cigar box alongside an engraved flask. In the same display case, you’ll see photos of “Speck” with anti-Prohibition protest signs and a primer on his passion for spirits.

To keep the liquor flowing at the Broadmoor, Penrose bought out a Philadelphia-based liquor distributor right before Prohibition hit in 1920. He hedged his bets by storing the 300 cases in multiple locations in New York, Philadelphia, and Colorado Springs. This led to rumors of tunnels for moving the contraband to and from the Broadmoor.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, Penrose had the remainder of his East Coast reserves shipped by rail to Colorado, requiring two full freight cars. He was so excited he threw a party at the Broadmoor to commemorate the 21st Amendment. For $2.50, revelers at the “Victory Dinner and Dance” got all the cocktails they could drink.

Workers later rediscovered a closet of lost bottles from the cache in a basement room at the resort in the 1980s. Some of the collection remains in private hands today, including bottles of cognac that spent 40 years undersea in a sunken Spanish ship.

Just across the lobby from Spencer’s glass eye, Bottle Alley is a hallway dominated by triple-tiered display cases with more than 1,000 vintage bottles, some of which Penrose stashed and personally emptied during the lean times of Prohibition. It’s just the place to get lost for a few minutes between bars.

Speaking of bars, the Broadmoor has a lot of them today. The Hotel Bar, with outdoor seating on Cheyenne Lake, was operating back in Spencer’s day. The Summit lounge has a 500-bottle wine turret behind the bar and sublime cocktails. Play at the Broadmoor features adult milkshakes, bowling, foosball, and other games.

And the Golden Bee is one of the best bars in Colorado, a British pub shipped to Colorado in pieces and lovingly reassembled a block from Broadmoor Main. Open since 1961, it now serves up gastropub fare, sing-alongs with piano players, and 48-ounce yards of beer, not to mention the bartenders deftly flinging bees at patrons. (Trust us on this one. They’re not insects, they’re stickers.)

It’s been more than 100 years since the beginning of Prohibition. Mark the occasion: Any bar at the Broadmoor will do nicely to raise a glass to Spencer “Speck” Penrose and his scorn for temperance — and his bloodshot glass eye.

This story is in our March-April print issue. Click here to read the full magazine.

Eric Peterson is a freelance writer who covers travel, business, and real estate, as well as Colorado’s craft beverage industry. Eric lives in Denver with his wife, Jamie, and their faithful mutts, Aoife and Ogma.