Ehrenwerth-Ramsey-Untermeyer Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice carryin' it down the road. Way back in 1873, a man named Henry M. Ehrenwerth set his mind to building something that would last.

And last it did. Over the course of 1873 to 1875, he raised a two-story commercial structure right here in Colorado County, every brick of it pulled from a local kiln. He built it for his mercantile store, something solid, something serious.

But buildings have a way of taking on lives their builders never planned. Come the 1880s, that respectable mercantile space was housing L.G. Smith's Red Elk Saloon and Gambling Hall.

That's right. The same walls Ehrenwerth stacked for dry goods and commerce were echoing with something considerably livelier. Then 1896 rolls around, and a man named James Ramsey purchases the building.

Now Ramsey was a practical soul. He set up a hardware, implement, and undertaking business under that roof, which is, if you stop and think about it, quite a range of human need covered under one address. Tools to build a life, and arrangements for when the building's done.

His son Charles eventually took the reins, and in 1925 he sold the structure to a hardware firm, the Untermeyers: Leo L., F. J., and Emil E. J.

Untermeyer. One building, one local kiln's worth of brick, and more chapters than most novels get. Henry Ehrenwerth built it to move goods.

It moved a whole lot of history instead.

What the marker says

Henry M. Ehrenwerth built this two-story commercial structure in 1873-75 of bricks from a local kiln. Designed for his mercantile store, it housed L.G. Smith's Red Elk Saloon and Gambling Hall in the 1880s. In 1896 the building was purchased by James Ramsey, who operated a hardware, implement, and undertaking business here. His son Charles sold the structure in 1925 to the hardware firm of Leo L., F. J. and Emil E. J. Untermeyer.