From 1909, when construction began, to now as crews work round the clock to get it ready, the Skirvin Hotel takes in a lot of Oklahoma City history.

For some rich folks, staying at the Skirvin might never have been a big deal, but for a whole lot of others the experience was worth treasuring. Honeymooners kept receipts and regular people saved things like doilies and matchbooks.

People like Cindy Bench are using these old mementos to connect the old Skirvin with the new.

Arden and Associates is located in Piedmont, but Cindy and her team spent more than a year combing the whole state for pieces of history. They found old place settings, silver service, bottle openers and all kinds of things monikered with the Skirvin name or crest.

They even found an old bellman's uniform.  It's a little worn and wrinkled, but it's worth a place in the remodeled hotel.

It's less than a week prior to the re-opening and the bubble-wrapped pieces of Skirvin history are taking their place alongside the truckloads of new things coming in.

When the first guests, in almost two decades, make their way through the front doors they'll see pieces of the past wherever they look. All of it having come from the regular people still out there for whom a stay at the Skirvin was truly special.

The fifty million dollar re-modeling of the old Skirvin Hotel is nearly complete. Three shifts a day are working round the clock to make ready for Monday's opening ceremonies and the first paying guests since 1988.