Period correct with no electric lights
By Jaclyn Schrock
The JKQ BBQ Restaurant is the newest non-gaming eatery in Central City, located on Eureka Street and Main within the Famous Teller House. This smoked-meat BBQ restaurant also offers fine drinks served around the Face on the Barroom Floor. New Year’s Eve has been a traditional celebration in these parts, so JKQ planned for the simple traditional year-end fun, fashion and flavor of nearly 150 years ago.
1859 is when the first gold was found in Gregory’s Diggings between what became Black Hawk and Central City. Within two months after the news got out, 10,000 gold seekers had arrived. When gold prospectors exhausted the easy surface gold found in the waterways with placer mining, they started digging hundreds of mines to find the gold source. This quickly developed into Central City as the boom town among the 17,000 mining claims in Gilpin County. Central City soon became a county seat in the territory of Colorado. Hotels were greatly needed, and the Teller House Hotel was constructed with materials that arrived by horse drawn wagons, and was the largest and most lavish, elegant hotel in Colorado, opening July 1872. Shortly before the Teller House was opened, the Colorado Central Railroad began building narrow gauge tracks from Golden and reached Black Hawk December 1872, and later to Floyd Hill and Idaho Springs. The first passenger car was not available until two years later in May 1874.
The Teller House became famous quickly, with its splendor of sitting rooms, flagstone terrace, and wooden balcony over the street. Romanesque construction with arched windows on the first floor revealed the grandeur and wealth of the region. The 150 rooms with its basement below and four stories above of brick, survived and was rebuilt after the whole wooden city’s destructive fire two years later. With Central City’s government seat as the center of so many smaller mining towns, commerce, theaters and Opera House, the Teller House kept many famous and/or speculative characters for at least 60 years. In April 1873, President Ulysses S. Grant came to the Teller House, eating an eight-course meal, though some say he didn’t stay long.
From the 1870s through the 1890s the Teller House elegantly served during the peak of fame and fortune with mining and commerce through the City of Central, Gilpin County, Colorado. The wealth that passed through those walls is still tastefully represented with many original or similar to original furnishings. Some of that was lost when the top floors were made into a casino in the 1990s. With exuberant festivities to honor those early days before electricity and motor cars, JKQ called local historians to help them celebrate their first New Years in the Teller House.
In honor of the limited resources available during those early mining days, then on the cutting edge of technology, JKQ’s New Year’s Eve menu only offered the items that were cooked without modern power sources, seeking to offer strictly the wood smoked meats and sides that were made with simpler original means. We all very much enjoyed the celebrative experience with great food, warmth indoors, although outdoors was minus 13 degrees, and a charming atmosphere with the artistic qualities of the Face Bar.
New Year’s Eve classical music from the ivory keys were tickled by Aileen Tamia in the Little Kingdom Room of the Teller House from 4-6 p.m. These exquisitely played classical piano pieces resounded through the first floor of the Teller House, calling the years to turn back to their original glory. As the dark of winter quickly crept into the room, the electric lighting was limited with the centered chandlers turned off, and the wall lamps were dimmed to be more like the original oil burning lamps. The tables were set with candles and lanterns to bring a warm glow to the rooms, heated by the registers in the floors and several steam heat radiators remaining in use. Reading music was challenging without the luxury of electric lamps, but the historic scene was set and festivities perpetuated the celebration of the closing of one year and the courage to face another.
Bonding the old traditions with newer ones, large and small clusters of folks gathered at the tables. There were folks dressed in the 1870s era as well as some with odd illuminating devices in modern clothing. Mayor-elect Jeremy Frey and his lovely wife were among those representing the elegance of the 1870s.
From 7 to 10 p.m. Robby Wicks continued the acoustic traditions with original and old favorite tunes performed without a microphone. His soulful, passionate presentations, mellow resonances and rhythmic strumming on his 6-string guitar livened up the event. The familiar lyrics had many of the guests in each room singing along.
The Little Kingdom Room was simply elegant with wooden tables and chairs, the evergreen boughs with red bows connecting the wall lamps above the tall arched windows on either side of the grand window across from the huge mirror. The 1870 gala festivities and sound filled the room nicely, as well as in the Face On the Bar Room Floor area, where guests at tables and at the bar had heads bobbing, toes tapping and participating in lively conversations – happy to end 2018.
The original hotel bar area is connected to the original flagstone terrace, now enclosed as the atrium. From the bar there are short sets of stairs in the front and back of the room that connect to the original entrance of the hotel. The hotel entry room is graced by the grand stair case of the original Teller House.
The walls of the hotel’s original Elevator Barroom also catch the eye. The interior wall’s paintings remind one of a collection of Greek statues. The trim and statues, or frescoes were discovered during days of refurbishing the Teller House bar, and each has an error included to test viewers perception. They are said to have been originally painted by Charles St. George Stanley, an English illustrator. In 1932, the frescoes were freshly restored to their original glory by Paschal Quackenbush. As magnificent as these are to illustrate a three dimensional view of men and women barely clothed, what really attracts the most visitors to Central City, is the Face on the Bar Room Floor.
The Face appeared on the floor one evening in 1936. When the Central City Opera House re-established summer Operas in 1932, the whole city took to perpetuating the pride of their past. There are many stories retold of how the face got there, and who the woman was. We can only speculate, but many suggest that it arrived there after too many drinks. Some suggest that a certain Denver Post artist, Herndon Davis painted the face as a prank, perhaps being dismissed from duties with the Teller Hotel. Davis is believed to have made the painting to pay homage to the French poet Hugh d’Arcy. In 1887, New York Dispatch first published d’Arcy’s poem, The Face on the Floor. In a later publication of d’Arcy’s works, he claims to have made a unique version of the poem by John Henry Titus. Titus first wrote The Face upon the Barroom Floor in 1872, inspired by an actual event at Joe Smith’s Saloon at Fourth Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan. Apparently, an artist devastated to have lost his true love to another man, turned to drinking. He told the barkeep and those in the NY tavern his sad tale, offering to sketch his lost love’s likeness on the floor, only to die in the midst of his work. The Teller House used the image of the face on the floor to promote their fame, and great favor was granted to d’Arcy for his poem. Unfortunately, the poem was actually published 45 years before the image appeared on the floor in Central City. A Charlie Chaplin movie in 1914, a Bowery Song Sheet, a John Ford 1923 movie and song, a 1954 Mad Magazine illustration, the 1978 Mollincone and Bowman opera commissioned by Teller House next door neighbor Central City Opera Company and various other publicity, recognized the poem as The Face on the Barroom Floor, and often seems to accompany the image in the Face Bar, now protected under glass for posterity.
There is a local version of the poem, made as a song that tells that the face goes with the bottom half that was painted on the ceiling of the Glory Hole Tavern, a block and a half away. Those legs seen from the feet show the bristled petticoat at the hips, now used as the logo for the Gilpin Historical Society. The artistic work on the walls and ceiling of the Glory Hole were not found later, as the building changed hands, and was even used to film the movie The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox. The building is now most recently vacated by the Doc Holiday Casino.
The lavish history of the Teller House made for a fine 1870s New Year’s Gala. In an eerie way, the elegance of the patrons of JKQ seemed to emulate the events printed in the Weekly Register-Call on Thursday, December 27, 2018. In the “Turning Back the Pages” historical section was found the reprinting of a Black Hawk Gold Dust story from January 1959. The clip tells that Jennie’s Inn had a New Year’s Eve party, with 200 people having a wonderful time. The new owners “gave the gala party in honor of Mrs. Jennie Zancandella who had operated the place since 1934.”
The JKQ BBQ Restaurant owned by Joe and Kara Tinucci, and Eric Chin, property director for the Central City Opera which manages the Teller House, the 2019 season may have been off to a wet start with some upstairs plumbing issues, but repairs were made and may the New Year go on to retell even more adventures and finish with splashing success. Happy 2019!
