[sentimental bluegrass music] LOREN LEW: A lot of people don't get restoration or saving things.

When you get involved in it, it becomes a story in and of itself.

CATHERINE STROH: It's not just about the bricks and mortar, but what about the people?

What about the history of that building?

It's maintaining that sense of place that I think people feel like is slipping away.

ALICE FERGUSON: Telluride would not be Telluride without the Nugget Building.

It's a cornerstone, it's there.

It has to be there.

WERNER CATSMAN: We were truly doing historic preservation and bringing arguably the most important building in Telluride back to all of its glory.

CATHERINE STROH: This was one of the biggest Hail Mary projects that I have personally seen.

[nostalgic guitar music] [birds chirping] [optimistic guitar strumming] MOLLY DANIEL: Anyone coming to Telluride today is part of a legacy of people showing up in this valley for generations and being in awe of the natural landscape of the mountains that surround us on all three on sides.

It's never been an easy place to get to.

You've really gotta want it to be here.

ALICE FERGUSON: History is really important to Telluride just because it's unique here.

For some reason, everybody to seems really love this town.

What can I say?

CATHERINE STROH: Well, looking back at Telluride's history, I think it's like a magnet.

Before the town was here, this is where the Ute Indians would come for a summer camp.

Then you had the miners come in, and they have the relatively small, rudimentary mining camp.

PAUL O'ROURKE: To think of it as a wild and woolly place is probably not too far from the truth.

In the 1880s, the saloons were always open.

There was gambling.

There was prostitution.

There was milling going on.

It was smoky, it was noisy, it was dusty.

It was a little wild.

There probably were as many gunshot wounds as sore throats for the doctors in town to take care of.

The world arrived at Telluride's doorstep with the arrival of the railroad.

[sounds of a moving train] CATHERINE STROH: Suddenly, it's a booming mining town.

There are business people coming in to support the miners and support their families, and the whole town is born around that.

MOLLY DANIEL: I would say a lot of the people coming out to this area were really just trying to find their way.

There was a lot of rags to riches stories and L.L.

Nunn was among many of them.

DR JACK NEWELL: Nunn's upbringing was very rich.

He had powerful friends everywhere.

Up until he was about 27, Nunn had been all over the place.

I'd call him a seeker, living an adventurous life, exploring his ideas, getting his philosophy together, and getting nowhere in terms of starting a life's work.

I think he liked generating the hustle, and I think he went where opportunities popped up.

And then, surprisingly, he decides to go and test his mettle in frontier Colorado.

MOLLY DANIEL: He definitely brought some of the biggest ideas here and was the beginning of a long legacy of creative, curious, innovative, hardworking people that have come to town and left their mark on it.

I have a crush on L.L.

Nunn.

DIRK DE PAGTER: He had to be ruthless because it was a ruthless time.

There was no question about it.

Going from an attorney into a mine manager to a mine speculator to then in the electrical business and everything else, he clearly was very well educated and aware of his surroundings and aware of what was happening in the world.

And that is unusual, I think, in that time frame for most anybody.

[sentimental guitar picking] RUDY DAVISON: I believe L.L.

Nunn was a visionary.

The Gold King Mine was spending $2,500 a month to bring coal in to keep its boilers going so the mine could work.

And the cost of that, that $2,500, was driving the mine into bankruptcy.

Nunn calculated that if you can get a hydroelectric power plant up and running, he could reduce that cost to, like, four or five dollars for electricity.

That was a huge deal.

PAUL O'ROURKE: He saw not only the advantages but the economics of alternating current electricity relative to direct current electricity.

The development of electric power and the distribution of those systems not only made him wealthy, made him famous.

At the same time, he became the president of the First National Bank.

ERIN SPILLANE: Nunn founded the First National Bank of Telluride, purchased the land, and hired prominent Denver architect James Murdoch, who came up with the distinctive Richardsonian Romanesque design.

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.

Nowadays called the Nugget Building, the edifice was originally referred to as the First National Bank Building.

[bright bluegrass music] ROBERT MATHER: When he built that building, think about what was around it.

One story shacks and a few buildings on Main Street.

There wasn't a whole lot.

RUDY DAVISON: He looked to grandeur.

So he wanted to make a statement with his First National Bank building because the little San Miguel Valley Bank was just a wooden structure.

It was just a plain Jane thing.

DIRK DE PAGTER: I have arrived, you know, was his statement with the building.

And that's probably why he sought out an architect, you know, that was of high enough caliber to be able to construct a creation like that, you know, which is really, you know, very unique in any mining town.

DR JACK NEWELL: I would guess his instructions to Murdoch went something like this: “I want a building here that's going to state that Telluride's on the map and it's gotta last, it's got to be impressive.

It's a monument.

Yeah.

[music takes a sentimental turn] MOLLY DANIEL: Telluride's boom time would have been from about 1890 to 1920 and after that, we had World War One, there was the Spanish flu, and then the Great Depression.

And there was a period of time where Telluride could have been called a ghost town, there were just a handful of people left here who were kind of remnants of Telluride's mining days.

SENIOR MAHONEY: If you look at all the buildings in town, to me that First National Bank building is is the one that is really, uh, stands out.

That was a place where most most people congregated when I was a teenager.

It was close to the Nugget Theater for one thing.

The drugstore, the Elks Club.

That was the the center of town.

Center of the world, I guess, for us.

ELVIRA WUNDERLICH: To me, that was the most majestic building in Telluride.

I just loved that building.

It stood out.

Going to the bank in Telluride was a privilege and a pleasure.

I mean, you did not go downtown or to the picture show unless you were dressed up and clean.

MOLLY DANIEL: You'll notice in photos over the years that the tower of the building eventually disappeared.

It had to taken be down in 1935 because of instability.

From then on, the skyline never looked quite the same.

[mournful music] [happier guitar picking] WERNER CATSMAN: In the 1970s, this town still was basically right out of the turn of the century.

I mean, people were still taking baths in a bathhouse, swinging doors on my dad's saloon, only one paved road in the whole town.

We kind of felt like we grew up in the old west in a lot of ways until the ski industry took off.

[upbeat music kicks in] [melancholy piano] WERNER CATSMAN: The main thing about the Nugget is it was the the movie theater in town.

And ironically, it was always kind of a grimy building.

You know, it really hadn't been well maintained or taken care of.

So as a kid, it wasn't a very attractive place to be, but it was always kind of considered to be a little bit of a dilapidated, you know, anchor and corner in the town.

DIRK DE PAGTER: They decided that the best way to preserve the sandstone is to put a material on it which is sprayed on.

It's a cement material, it's called gunite.

And originally, the color was in style with you know, like what the building color was.

It was red.

However, you know, over time because of the of the exposure to ultraviolet UV light, you know, it started changing color and it became purple.

So you'll see many photos out of the '80s where the building is really purple and it looks pretty hideous.

SENIOR MAHONEY: I don't think any of the people, I'm talking I'm talking for the older people, I don't think they ever thought that the building would ever be fixed up.

You know, probably figured it'd probably just stay the way it was.

It would continually to fall down.

Yeah, until it was it was gone, know, because there was nobody would wanna put any money into it to to retain it, you know.

And this is what happened to a lot of our buildings during the '30s, '40s and '50s.

People just really didn't care.

[majestic piano music] KATRINE FORMBY: Bill and I knew that we wanted to buy a place in Colorado to have a place to go to ski.

And so we decided to look all over Colorado, and we looked at Telluride first, and 30 minutes after we got off the plane, we looked at each other and said, "We don't have to look anywhere else, this is the most beautiful town we've ever seen."

[beautiful piano continues] We walked into a real estate office and everything changed when I saw a sketch on the realtor's wall of this building that had a tower on it and arched windows and it was just gorgeous.

And I said to the realtor, “Where is that building?” He said, "You're sitting in it, and it's for sale.” BILL FORMBY: I was pretty sure she had.

KATRINE FORMBY: We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into by buying an old building.

This is the first time we'd invested in something that needed to have restoration, that needed work.

We fell in love with the building and so we decided to take a chance.

ERINE SPILLANE: Katrine and Bill Formby, a couple who split their time between Telluride and Austin, have embarked on a construction project that, when complete, will see a tower, finials, and a balustrade identical to the originals once more atop the Main Street edifice.

KATRINE FORMBY: I started taking pictures on day one.

It dropped into my head that, you know, I might want to make a documentary or at least keep track of how we're changing the building.

Then I bought a video camera, I didn't know how to work it, but I figured how hard can it be you know just start filming.

I certainly didn't know it was gonna take over 20 years.

[optimistic guitar plucking] CATHERINE STROH: The trades people in preservation, hugely important.

The costs for preservation really go into the labor.

You're paying the people that have the skills to actually go in and know what they're doing to repair the building and keep it sturdy, keep it looking good for generations to come.

KATRINE FORMBY: We heard that there were two restoration experts in Silverton named Fritz Klinke and Loren Lew, and so we had a meeting with them and immediately knew these were the guys that were gonna help us.

FRITZ KLINKE: I kind of like the old way of doing things.

With care, with concern that it's going to outlast you and maybe your own kids, it'll last for a long time.

Regardless of who owns it, we work for the building.

And that sometimes comes before the client.

Loren came out here during college and he was wanting to become a veterinarian but he didn't get into the school he wanted.

And he said, "Can I come out and work for a summer?"

So, here he is.

That's, uh, 50 years now.

LOREN LEW: My dad used to tell me, we used to build sandcastles out on the beach, "There are people that want to build a sandcastle and there are people that their energy is in watching something fall apart.

Get rid of it, put up something new.

What's the latest stuff?"

But the preservation of not only the resource, but the history that's involved with it is everything.

It it becomes a story in and of itself.

My role is try to continue the story so it'll be there for other people to read.

CATHERINE STROH: Here in Colorado, we have something unique called the State Historical Fund and that issues grants out to owners of historic buildings to help them preserve them and maintain them well into the future.

WERNER CATSMAN: When Katrine started explaining that it was really just to, build the building back to its original glory and to put the the the corner back in place, truly doing historic preservation.

That was the most exciting part.

The scariest part was the building itself.

LOREN LEW: When I-we first went to the building and, um, Fritz and I took a look at it, my first words was, "Oh boy."

FRITZ KLINKE: It was a mess.

It was a real mess.

It had all this blue paint on it.

It had stone falling from the front of it.

You can tell by looking at a building what it's saying to you.

It's like the Nugget was saying, "Help me help me help me, and hurry up because I don't have much time left."

[hefty music kicks in] [various construction sounds] LOREN LEW: A lot of times you have to undress the building first to actually find out what's below.

Actually taking off that blue stucco, shotcrete, revealed the condition that it was actually in.

And that's when you start getting a feel for what it's going to take.

You can see it just falls around.

And that's from water getting in behind it, and it just it just starts peeling off in layers.

This is the bed layer.

You come across it like this, you can see it just basically just falls right off here.

CATHERINE STROH: You know, most materials of buildings honestly are going to need some level of maintenance over time.

There is no miracle material, no miracle mortar.

At some point, the ground is going to shift a little bit.

WERNER CATSMAN: We were petrified that stones could come loose, there were brick walls that were already cracked and showing signs of failure.

How do we make sure we don't impact this building in any way while we're trying to to preserve it at the same time.

LOREN LEW: Every time we removed a stone, there was something else we had to, you know, address or... You're always afraid that taking out that one Jenga stone is gonna have that whole thing come cascading down on you.

WERNER CATSMAN: And then the last piece of the puzzle, definite concerns about public safety.

Just it's on a very prominent corner in downtown Telluride.

There's not a lot of elbow room.

You know, it was kind of nerve-racking thinking, "Okay, how are we gonna make sure, we don't hurt anybody while we're doing this?"

But I think some people were, were excited.

I think other were like, "Well, why is the sidewalk closed?” That's a lot of, kind of, living here in Telluride.

For such a small town, there's a lot of of opinions.

I don't think everybody completely understood what we were doing, and I think there was skepticism about whether it would actually work and whether we could do it.

DIRK DE PAGTER: That was, of course, the the big concern about when when Katrine and Bill took over the building is they were like, "What are they thinking of doing to this building?"

We were all kind of holding our breath.

KATRINE FORMBY: We just thought Telluride is so beautiful, this building is so beautiful.

We did not know exactly what we were going to do with the building.

But I have always loved movies.

So the fact that the movie theater was in the building, you know, was a real plus.

I had visions of actually making the building into a movie hub, as well, but with adding more screens.

Because there's a vacant lot, in the- DIRK DE PAGTER: In the rear, yeah.

KATRINE FORMBY: In the rear.

You could add another screen there.

And then I thought, well then we can dig down, we could put a screen underground, and we can make, like, a little multiplex, you know, because I love movies.

And my husband always teased me, you know, he still teases me today, "Katrine, you think you're in the movie business because you own a building that has a movie theater in it."

I thought, "That's right!

I am in the movie business!"

DIRK: Movie business, yes.

KATRINE: You know?

[energetic percussive music] [various construction sounds] BILL FORMBY: Just like Twilight Zone walking in here.

Like, "Where am I?"

KATRINE FORMBY: I just really feel like we became a wonderful team together.

The restoration people, the architects, the even the townspeople, the people in the planning department.

We became kind of a family and a team together all wanting the same thing.

WERNER CATSMAN: Everything from drillers who were drilling foundation pieces to concrete guys to carpenters and framers and stonemasons and a lot of engineers as well.

FRITZ KLINKE: Well, we were lucky that everybody who worked with us was in tune with the building.

And we would try something, usually it worked, occasionally it didn't, then we'd start over.

[tense music] KATRINE FORMBY: The questions that we got the most: "When are you putting the tower back up?"

Because everybody has seen pictures of the old building when the tower was up, but there's certain things you have to do before you the tower on.

That was scary a time.

BILL FORMBY: Yeah, we didn't have any money.

KATRINE FORMBY: I think we had the money but it was all tied up.

We had to ask friends to borrow money so we could finish the tower.

BILL FORMBY: We we got it just in time.

CATHERINE STROH: This was one of the biggest Hail Mary projects that I have personally seen.

They had the courage to reconstruct a very heavy stone tower that had to be taken down because of years and years of instability driven by flooding underneath the building.

WERNER CATSMAN: This has never been done before.

It's completely unique.

The stone tower was too heavy to be supported, and we felt the same even with modern construction.

It was like, "Boy, how are we gonna do this physically?

How how are we gonna defy gravity with this tower, sitting on top of a stone building that was built by hand a hundred years ago?

Maybe we can use a different product than natural stone and that's gonna make resolving these structural forces a lot easier for us."

So we used glass fiber reinforced concrete.

And I think everybody had a lot of skepticism about whether that could work and myself included.

And that was really probably one of the the the most interesting parts of the project and most rewarding was solving the puzzle, figuring out how to put this tower back knowing that it was structurally impossible, which is why it originally failed.

[construction sounds] ERIN SPILLANE: It wasn't until late spring 2021 when the finishing touches, as well as an eight foot finial covered in gold leaf, were ready for installation.

[triumphant music] Those final steps were completed on June 1st, and at Telluride Town Council's June 29 meeting, Mayor Delaney Young and Historic Preservation Director Jonah Wenzel recognized the Formbys with a commendation: the Historic Landmark Award.

The commendation recognizes outstanding contribution to the preservation of a local landmark.

[reflective steel pedal guitar music] ALICE FERGUSON: If my town, Telluride, wasn't preserved, it wouldn't be Telluride.

Just restoring the Nugget Building in many ways brings this town back to life.

PAUL O'ROURKE: The manner in which the restoration was conducted, how the Formbys and the people who worked on the building put so much of their heart and soul into that project.

When it came to be, it was as though Telluride was put back to whole again.

And so it was a monumental achievement from many, many respects.

CATHERINE STROH: The Formbys, they're an exceptional example for the decades of dedication they've put into this building and the risk and the courage.

KATRINE FORMBY: We didn't know what we were doing with restoration, but it's okay to jump off the building and then build your wings on the way down.

CATHERINE STROH: The personality type of a preservationist, whether they're the owner or whether they're one of the many consultants working on your project, you need to be a risk taker.

You need to be a creative solution finder.

You have to not be afraid of complex problems and have tenacity and really have to be willing to lean in and just enjoy the discovery process and learning about the stories along the way.

KATRINE FORMBY: Bill and I didn't come from wealth, so the ability to take on a project like the restoration of the Nugget is something that was really beyond our wildest dreams.

I just think it's an encouragement in other parts of my life to just try things.

I didn't know that restoration was going to be as costly or as difficult as it was, but I think it was kind of a sense of optimism that we can do some things that we don't know we're gonna do.

What I've learned about aging, as I've aged, it's a precious thing to see the changes that happen and to really honor them because life is not something that's going to be forever for any of us.

Because my husband developed Parkinson's and wasn't able to come back to Telluride because of the altitude, we knew that our chapter in Telluride was coming to a close.

It just had to.

All the decisions that we made during the 20 years, I always asked myself: "What decision would the building want?"

We had done our part for the building and now it's time for next owner to do their part.

That's what the building wants.

[cover version of Gipsy Kings' “La Montaña”] CATHERINE STROH: I think especially now, preservation and history are- they're a bit precarious.

We're not necessarily seeing the government support for some of the programs that we've come to rely on and celebrate so greatly.

I would encourage anyone who's interested in investing in old properties or is interested in rolling up their sleeves and learning how to do some of the work and getting involved in the trades to really seek out some information on how to get involved because you'll find that you really love it.

It's a love of life.