Kimpton Armory Hotel Bozeman

Before the dance floor in the Armory's music hall had dancers on it, it had tanks. Fred Fielding Willson designed the building for the National Guard in 1941, two storeys of Art Deco concrete with a rifle range and an officers' club, and when it became a hotel in 2020 almost all of it stayed: 98 per cent, by the hotel's count. The band practised in the basement, which is still where the music is, in Tune Up, a whiskey bar with local bands and touring acts. Fielding's, the restaurant, takes the architect's middle name, and the awning over the door was built from his own drawings, a flourish the Guard never got. A new tower takes the building to nine storeys, the tallest downtown, and on its roof are a heated saltwater pool and Sky Shed, a glass-walled bar facing four mountain ranges.

Recommended for couples and families using Bozeman as a base for Yellowstone or the ski hills, who would like the hotel to supply the evenings. There is a complimentary social hour with local beer, wine and spirits, and Main Street is just round the corner. Yellowstone's north entrance is 78 miles away through Paradise Valley, and one of the hotel's partner guides collects from the door for a full day in the park. Bridger Bowl is twenty minutes north and Big Sky a little over an hour south. The hotel lends bikes in season and snowshoes and sleds in winter; children get a welcome present and games in the room, and connecting rooms can be requested. When the cold comes, the roof puts up the Snow Shed, a pop-up chalet for warming up with wine, and the pool stays open until ten at night, heated, nine storeys above a Montana winter.