A little dust on the bottle

The building at 110 W. Bridge Ave. in Saratoga has been home to various businesses over the years. Built in 1903, it served as a theater at one time. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it found new life as various art galleries. For several years, the doors remained closed with very little activity taking place at the location.

In May of this year, however, the building came under new ownership. The new owners are no strangers to the Valley or to Carbon County, nor are they strangers to historic restoration. Noel Shephard and her mother, Heidi Larsen, can trace their family history in the county back over 100 years.

"Our family has been here for 114 years," said Larsen.

Shephard currently teaches art at Saratoga Middle High School (SMHS) and also taught art at the Encampment K-12 Schools. Larsen was also a teacher, primarily teaching when Shephard was young on a Native American Reservation in Idaho. Having grown up in a family whose business was construction, she eventually used those skills to provide for her family as a single mother.

"My dad always took us around on these projects. I had brothers, but I was expected to go and help with the boys. I didn't want to a lot of the time, but I'm really glad I did because I learned so much from my dad having to work in construction and remodeling," Larsen said. "I taught school, and I loved it, but I also could make a lot of money flipping houses, I couldn't make enough money teaching, and I had her to raise by myself, so I thought, 'Well, I'll just take a project house on.' I would remodel a house, sell it and make more money doing that than I did teaching the whole year."

Around the time that Shephard was in her early teens, Larsen married. At almost the exact same time, the City of Rawlins was debating tearing down the Strand Theater. The building, which looms over downtown Rawlins, was built by Larsen's grandfather and had been condemned. It was continuing to fall into disrepair.

Larsen called the owner of the building, who was going through the process with the City of Rawlins in terms of demolishing it, who offered it to her for only $10. She and her husband accepted the offer, buying the Strand Theater sight unseen. At the time, Larsen was living in Lander and teaching on the Wind River Reservation.

"We went down to Rawlins and Rawlins was really struggling then. Downtown was vacant, buildings were vacant. That was the answer, 'Tear it down, tear it down.' Tear down the Ferguson, tear down the Strand Theater," said Larsen. "My background is in teaching, but I also did a lot of remodeling and I just got into historic preservation because they were trying to tear down Rawlins."

The Strand Theater was the first building that Larsen cut her teeth on, and it was a large undertaking.

"Nothing could shock us after we did that one," Larsen said.

Despite the massive amounts of disrepair inside the Strand Theater, Larsen and her husband worked together to get the building to the point where the City of Rawlins agreed not to pursue demolition. According to Larsen, she thought of the historical building in terms of it being a large house.

After the work was done on the Strand Theater, Larsen and her husband acquired the Ferguson Building, the Miller-Dailey Building and the Osborne Building. The Ferguson is now home to Carbon County Museum and Miller-Dailey houses Anong's Thai Cuisine.

"The doctors that owned those three cornerstone buildings, we went to them and we said 'We'll just buy the Ferguson.' They said 'No, you've got to buy all these buildings or nothing.' So, we did," said Larsen. The three additional buildings would also end up restored.

After Shephard graduated from high school, Larsen moved to Newcastle and bought another building. This one was a hotel that had, much like the Strand Theater, been declared condemned. Renovation was completed and it came to be home to the Historical Antlers Restaurant & Lounge.

"It's now a running business; it has a restaurant, rental spaces in the back," said Shephard.

Larsen eventually returned to Carbon County and her desire to renovate historic buildings returned with her. She began looking at some of the older buildings in the area that were on the market, but her sights eventually fell upon the old theater next to Union Wireless.

"I looked at this ... and this was a really good price. It was big enough and right downtown, we wanted to be on the main street," Larsen said.

"There was some electrical, plumbing, little things. Those aren't a huge, big deal. Not a complete restoration," Shephard said. "People walk in here and they're like 'Wow, this is big,' but compared to the things that they've had, not really. Also the condition that it's in. When I came in I was like 'Wow, this is really good.'"

Larsen and Shephard purchased the property in May and have been making gradual improvements to the building. The first, obvious change is the front of the building which sports a new paint job and now has window displays. There are other upgrades as well.

The ceiling of the lobby is plastered with papers of varying shades. Upon closer inspection, they are pages and documents nearly 100 years old. They include sheet music, subscription renewal notices and pages from books. According to Larsen and Shephard, they were all papers found in the Ferguson Building after it was purchased. It made sense to them to include their past and more history in the renovation of this building.

The name of their business, Bottle Bar Art Studio, involves another aspect of their family history; their family brand.

"Our family in Rawlins, the Larsen side, had all the buildings and did a lot of the big old buildings," Shephard said. "The other side of our family were sheep ranchers and so, that's where our family ranch comes into play, which has also been in our family for over 100 years."

"Our heritage is obviously very important to us, so we kind of wanted to use that name," added Larsen.

According to Larsen, the brand had been abandoned and all it required was a call to the Wyoming Brand Association to activate it, again. 

"It is our family brand, but it's also western and this town is very western, which I think is wonderful," Larsen said.

As of now, Bottle Bar Art studio is open by appointment and they have hosted a handful of canvas painting programs. According to Shephard, however, they want to move beyond that and not only offer different art classes, but utilize the space of the theater.

"We want to do a really wide variety. We really enjoy doing the canvas painting classes, but we want to do more than that just because, I think, that will help us have more of a clientele," said Shephard. "We also want to offer, if somebody wants to book a party and do a birthday party through us, we could do that down here. I think, eventually, we do want to have some days where we are open and offer some open studio times."

Bottle Bar Art Studio can be found online at www.facebook.com/BottleBarArtStudio.