Businesses restore historic buildings

Thursday, May 7, 1998 | 10:35 a.m.

Over the past year or so, three Carson Valley businesses made the decision to take historical buildings and adapt them to the future while restoring their bygone-days appearance.

The catch is that each remodel cost more than alternative building solutions like starting from scratch or buying something new. But these buildings have something a new structure can't possibly offer: history.

The Minden Wool Warehouse, at the corner of U.S. 395 and Buckeye Road, is owned by Bently Nevada Corp. When the company experienced growing pains not long ago, Bently planners considered several options for more office space.

"We could have put up a new building for a lot less money," said Bently construction manager George Goodspeed. "But in the end it didn't seem like the right thing to do."

Instead, Bently planners decided to remodel and retrofit the historic wool warehouse, which was built for $15,000 in 1915, commissioned by H.F. Dangberg, Jr. and designed by prominent architect Frederic J. DeLongchamps. It's currently on the National Register of Historic Places.

The warehouse was originally used to store wool from the nearby Buckeye Ranch and potatoes from area farmers. The building was also used as office space for the Dangberg Land and Livestock Co.

Don Bently, founder of Bently Nevada Corp., said he's pleased with the remodeling job done on the old warehouse.

"It was a bit of a homely building before, but now the gables have really dolled it up," Bently said. "I am really pleased with it."

In addition to gables, designers added gray metal awnings to the building and restored the original lettering on the brick walls, added more lettering to the east and north sides of the structure.

During the renovation, which cost more than $1 million, a cement roof was replaced to comply with earthquake safety standards.

"They had the cement roof to help control the humidity for the wool," Bently said. "But it would have made a concrete sandwich in a big earthquake, so we took it off and threw it away."

The J.T. Basque Bar & Dining Room, on the corner of U.S. 395 and Eddy Street in Gardnerville, was moved from the Silver City-Gold Hill area to Genoa in the 1890s and to its current site in 1895.

But when brothers Jean and Pete Lekumberry purchased the bar and restaurant in 1960, a balcony that could be seen in old pictures of the building had disappeared.

The pictures intrigued family members, according to Marie Lekumberry, Jean's daughter, who now runs the business with brother J.B.

"We were doing a lot of work on the interior including foundation work and we wanted to do an authentic reproduction of the building, so we did the balcony at the same time," she said.

The balcony was completed last December and Marie said she and J.B. haven't closely scrutinized the amount of money they ended up spending.

"It was definitely thousands of dollars, but we're too scared to actually figure it out," she said. "It definitely paid off, though, because we are dedicated to downtown and want to be here for the next 50 years. It was worth it."

The original Farmer's Bank of Carson Valley was located at the corner of Esmeralda and Fourth Street and opened for business Oct. 20, 1909. The building served as a bank for 10 years. After outgrowing its space, a new bank was build directly across the street to the north, designed by Frederic J. DeLongchamps, and the old bank was converted to the Minden Post Office and operated as such from 1918 to 1964.

In 1996, when new residents John Campbell and Martha Kinder were looking for a place to house their new business, Nevada Gourmet, they considered several sites and eventually settled on the old bank building.

Its character and proximity to downtown and the county complex inspired the pair, and they opened for business in November 1996.

"We really feel this building has made this business," Campbell said. "We could have gone someplace else for less money, but we wouldn't have had this atmosphere. People tell us it reminds them of coffee shops in San Francisco."

Kinder said that when she and Campbell began to gut the inside of the building to make it appropriate for their business, they found a few surprises.

"We found that the original tin ceiling, still painted post office green, was above a false lower ceiling," she said. "We decided to use the vault for a chocolate vault."