RICH HISTORY
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EXQUISITE MAKEOVER
Restoration project aims to put ‘top hat’ back on storied building
ucien L. Nunn, who figures elsewhere in this issue as well, was a man of large ideas. The first person in the world to use the then-new format of alternating-current electricity in a commercial setting, which he achieved in 1891, Nunn built a stately home on Columbia Avenue and installed what was reputed to be the biggest bathtub in town. Nunn founded the First National Bank of Telluride, then the county’s only bank. He was also behind the construction of an imposing building on the northwest corner of North Fir Street and Colorado Avenue to house his new bank. Nowadays called the Nugget Building, the edifice was originally referred to as the First National Bank Building. In keeping with Nunn’s outsized way of doing things, the majestic building included a striking tower on its southeast corner, a square turret topped with a pyramidal roof that rose high above Main Street. According to the building’s entry in the Colorado Cultural Research Survey, Nunn purchased the land for $1,800 and hired prominent Denver architect James Murdoch, who came up with the distinctive Richardsonian Romanesque design. Constructed from native red sandstone and completed in 1892, the structure housed the Telluride Power Company and a jewelry and sewing machine store, as well as the First National Bank of Telluride, successor of the San Miguel Valley Bank, notorious as the first bank Butch Cassidy ever robbed.
1892 BY ERIN SPILLANE
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