Famed Oxford Hotel bar opened 90 years ago, on Repeal Day

By Gregory Daurer

What's 90 years old, pomegranate-hued, and shaped like a wine bottle?

It's The Cruise Room—the slender, storied bar celebrating its ninth decade of continuous operation within the Oxford Hotel in Denver. National alcohol prohibition ended on Dec. 5, 1933, with the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Cruise Room claims to have opened the very next day.

Repeal Day party
The Cruise Room hosts a party at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 5 to mark the 90th anniversary of prohibition’s repeal. The event includes cocktail specials and live music from Colorado songwriter David Lawrence.

The iconic bar remains one of Denver's most celebrated. No guide book on Denver worth its salt fails to mention the cozy watering hole.

Its name derives from a direct connection to the Queen Mary ocean liner: the wine-bottle-shaped barroom was conceived by the same architect who designed the observatory lounge on the ship. And evoking the Golden Age of Travel, the bar’s walls are decorated with endearing ’30s-era Art Deco panels depicting people from various countries offering a toast in their native language. It says “Skal” above a Norwegian woman with braided hair, “Cheerio” beneath an English couple, and “Salud” beneath a mustached Spaniard. Near the bar’s vintage jukebox, the phrase “Bottoms Up” appears on a wall, along with a Native American in feathered headdress and a train locomotive.

The Oxford Hotel itself — built in 1891 with brewer Adolph Zang's money — stands about a half block away from the entrance to Denver's longtime train depot, Union Station. And The Cruise Room is accessible mere steps into the hotel. Upon entering the Oxford, look to the left. That's where dramatic lighting begins pouring out of the glass doorway leading into the bar like a mixed drink out of a shaker into a cocktail glass. Surprisingly, a combination of pink and orange neon tubes recessed along the walls lend the bar its distinctive reddish-pomegranate hue.

The bar has traditionally been so famous for its martinis, and a few recipes were included in Gary Regan's 1997 book “The Martini Companion: A Connoisseur's Guide.” Its reputation has been noted within literature, as well: take Stephen White’s 1996 thriller “Harm’s Way,” in which The Cruise Room is described as a “martini place” that’s “full of pretty people.” Today, Charlotte Rubald, The Cruise Room's bar lead, says, “I would say we're probably best known for our classics”—cocktails such as the Tom Collins, Manhattan, and Old Fashioned, in addition to the martini. But it’s also a place where younger drinkers can try a cocktail that trends on TikTok, like the Negroni, she says.

Speaking of videos, singer and producer Jack White shot the video for his 2014 song “Would You Fight For My Love?” within The Cruise Room. Bathed in a chilly blue glow (rather than that warm pomegranate), the video shows apparitions sitting at booths within the bar, as White laments a doomed love.

And speaking of ghosts, The Cruise Room supposedly plays host to a long-departed mailman, who, depending on the telling, either laments how he still needs to deliver Christmas packages to children or bemoans the cost of a beer today compared with his bygone era.

So what’s the spirit of The Cruise Room today as it enters its ninth decade? Rubald says it remains a bar that appeals to both hotel guests and longtime Denverites of all ages. She adds how, in a constantly changing city, The Cruise Room continues to offer an atmosphere of post-prohibition “celebration,” in addition to longstanding Denver “tradition.”