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From the Vault: Silver Dollar Cocktail Lounge’s 1941 revival

One b/w photograph of Tony Kastelik and Louis Vedic standing in front of the Silver Grill Cafe on Hyman Avenue, 1936.

On Feb. 20, 1941, The Aspen Times published an article featuring the recently renovated Silver Grill Café, which included a new cocktail lounge. According to the paper, “During the past few weeks the whole building has been redecorated and the east room, which formerly served as a banquet room, has been remodeled inside and out and made into a cocktail lounge which will be operated in connection with the café. The Silver Dollar Cocktail Lounge, as it will be known, has been refinished in rustic style, the exterior and interior covered with log slabs to give a pioneer days effect. An old-fashioned bar has been secured, which fits in well with the old-time setting of the room. In the ceiling above the bar have been burned the brands of every rancher in the county. The cocktail lounge will be lighted with indirect, subdued lighting from novelty fixtures. The big feature of the lounge which the management is stressing most in the announcement is the direct draught box from which a fine eastern beer will be served. The new system, the second to be installed on the Western Slope, has revolutionized the beer industry in the East and is gradually working westward. The cocktail lounge will also carry complete line of scotches, wines and cordials, featuring mixed drinks. The personnel in supervision of the business will include Hannibal Brown, famous throughout the Western Slope for his mixed drinks, in the cocktail lounge, and Jackie Marshall, who is well known in the restaurant business here, in the café.”

The photo above shows Tony Kastelik and Louis Vedic standing in front of the Silver Grill Café on Hyman Avenue in 1936, before it was redone.

This photo and more can be found in the Aspen Historical Society archives at aspenhistory.org.

Aspen Times Weekly

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