Colorado Music-Related Business|

Photo: Downtown Golden, Colorado – The Buffalo Rose is to the right, just out of the view of the photo! (From Wikipedia’s “Golden, Colorado” page)

When Chris Cone set out to remodel the Buffalo Rose — a popular bar and live-music venue made up of five historic buildings in the heart of downtown Golden — he had no idea what histories he would uncover.

Workers removed plaster from a brick wall of one of the buildings, exposing painted black numbers that indicated where cars should be parked; the structure, constructed in 1922, had originally served as a garage and auto dealership.

“It’s really kind of cool to have found that beneath all this old plaster,” Cone says. “And in general, just the brick from that 1920s era that we uncovered is beautiful.”

Cone says that they also discovered interesting artifacts and historical elements, like a shipping crate from the early 1900s once used to send dry goods.

Throughout the remodel, Cone, who purchased the venue in 2016, has aimed to preserve as much of the existing structures as possible. The oldest building dates back to 1870, while the newest was built in 1922.

“It’s a very old set of buildings that have really had no updating for quite some time,” Cone says. “When we closed the operations [in November 2017], we knew it was going to be quite an effort, quite a journey to get these buildings redone. And it really has been. There’s a lot to the project.”

Still, given the age of some of the buildings, Cone says there was surprisingly little structural work that needed to be done.

“For example, on the corner building, where we now have the main entrance to the restaurant, it’s been a commercial property since 1870,” Cone says. “For that building, we could have found significant issues with the structures, and we really didn’t. We were able to do a little bit of shoring up. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

“All the original wood is pretty well-kept from being encased in plaster…so we can refurbish a lot,” he explains. “Honestly, the surprises, for the most part, were good surprises. In general, it’s a challenging project because of the size and its location in a busy downtown commercial district, but in a lot of ways, things could have been much, much worse as we got into these old buildings.”

Originally, Cone anticipated having the venue up and running by the end of 2018, but renovations took longer than expected. Now the Buffalo Rose will celebrate the grand opening of its concert venue and event center starting Friday, January 25, as part of the fifth annual UllrGrass Music Beer Festival, a wintertime community bluegrass festival; a bar and restaurant are slated to open in spring.

The Buffalo Rose’s new tagline, “Where the old meets the new,” sums up the place perfectly.

The complex, Cone notes, is made up of “different buildings from different eras or different years,” all of which have been updated with safety equipment, lighting, a new HVAC system and flooring, with an eye toward safety and comfort.

Read the whole original article with photos at:
https://www.westword.com/music/buffalo-rose-remodeled-reopens-with-the-ullrgrass-music-beer-festival-11106194

The Buffalo Rose is located at 1119 Washington Avenue in Golden; for more information, go to http://www.buffalorose.net or call 303-278-6800.

Jon Solomon writes about music and nightlife for Westword, where he’s been the Clubs Editor since 2006.

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