Hotel Brunswick Stories

The Hotel Brunswick and…

John Mulligan

John Mulligan is one of the first and most important people to be involved with the Brunswick. He was the architect, builder, and owner. However, the path that led Mulligan to the idea of the Brunswick started long before he arrived in Kingman, Arizona. In fact, it is Mulligan’s past that drove him to Kingman in the first place.

A son of immigrants who fled Ireland during the Famine in 1848, Mulligan was raised in Malden, Massachusetts. Racism towards Irish immigrants in that area was very real, and “No Irish Needed” were common words to see on signs in shop windows. This, combined with the fact that Mulligan had eleven other siblings, made childhood tough. However, Mulligan tried to escape his trouble and strike new fortune at age twenty. He bought several copper and silver mines in Kingman and, therefore, in 1874 he sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to San Francisco. After earning money here for two years Mulligan began his journey to Kingman, AZ in the spring of 1876. Mulligan rode a train to the end of the railroad line in that day—Needles, California. Needles was still 60 miles away from Kingman though, so Mulligan, a man of his word, proceeded to rent two mules for his belongings and walk the remaining miles to Kingman.

This was Mulligan’s demeanor: loyal, stern, and direct. If he said he was going to do something, it was going to be done. So when Mulligan said he was going to create the best hotel in Kingman that is just what he did. He built the Hotel Brunswick. He brought rare amenities to the mining town, offering brass beds, Waterford crystal, and telephones to his guests. Once, local miners (the Brunswick’s usual guests) even began to smash Mulligan’s crystal in a drunken celebration. Mulligan’s wife was understandably annoyed, and asked Mulligan why he spent so much money on Waterford crystal if he was going to let the miners destroy it. Mulligan simply replied, “I’ll have nothing but the best.” When it came to the Brunswick, Mulligan never failed to honor this promise.

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

"Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn," are perhaps the most famous words uttered by Clark Gable. Gable, born in 1901, decided to become an actress at the age of 16 after seeing the production ‘Bids of Paradise.’ First working for multiple stock companies and factories, Gable did not become a sensation until the thirties. Gable had married multiple times throughout his successful career; however, his third wife, Carole Lombard, is the most famous and adored. The couple first met in 1932 while filming a movie called ‘No Man of Her Own,’ but because both actors were married at the time no relationship started until 1935 when the two met again at a party. According to a 1939 newspaper article, the couple quickly went from being smitten to romantically in love after their second meeting. In 1939, Gable finally got officially divorced from his second wife, actress Loretta Young, and Gable and Lombard could marry.

So in late March 1939, Lombard and Gable hopped into their car and drove 350 miles to Kingman, Arizona. There they bought a marriage license from an awestruck clerk named Viola Olsen, and proceeded to the home of a Methodist Episcopal minister named Kenneth M. Engle. In the presence of a few Kingman locals, Mr. Engle made Clark Gable and Carole Lombard man & wife. The Hotel Brunswick was a poplar place the newlyweds frequented during this time. They ordered a few drinks from the famed Mulligan bar, and mingled with the locals’ in the restaurant and lobby. If the couples’ wedding had been larger, the Hotel Brunswick may have in fact been where they would have held their wedding reception. Still, the Hotel Brunswick was one of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s favorite gathering places in Kingman.

Mikayla Posey

Living in Kingman for 19 years, Mikayla Posey often saw the Brunswick and occasionally ate there. A family friend in fact had her wedding reception at the Hotel Brunswick, when Posey was a little girl. Running through the halls with the other kids playing tag, they tried to scare each other in the dark rooms. In one bathroom a rocking chair slightly rocked every time someone passed the door, but there was never anyone in it!

While fond memories, recollections of Hotel Brunswick were limited before Posey was given the task of researching its history.

A lot of dead ends occurred in the initial search of the Brunswick’s past, but finally in the resource library of the Mohave Museum of History and Arts, the Brunswick’s rich history began to unravel. Newspaper articles and artifacts, photos and old menus were found at the museum. Newspapers from 1907 talked about Kingman’s first buildings and the progress of local mines. Advertisements ran next to the articles, promoting meals for 15 cents!

Staying in that library for over 20 hours looking through the files of the Brunswick’s past, a tour through the empty Brunswick allowed it to be seen through the eyes of the past. Dirty miners could be imagined telling stories and jokes at the bar. John Mulligan Junior could be imagined running through the street, passing model T cars, to carry guests’ luggage from the train station to the hotel. The Brunswick itself was dark and bare during the tour, the electricity not turned on yet, but its past was still thriving—the walls still telling stories.