Who: Pueblo barman Paul Montez
Montez hung up his Army uniform for good on Saturday, freeing him to devote a bit more time to converting his family’s Senate Bar into a more appealing destination in Pueblo’s downtown Riverwalk district. “Right now, it’s a .38 Special bar, open from 3-8 p.m., Monday through Friday,” 50-year-old Montez says with a laugh.
Would-be busy weekends now are spent bringing some of the shine back to the storied bar, where political fortunes were made and lost over a beer and a bite to eat.
“I think of the make-ups, the break-ups, the deals that were made and what went on back in the dance hall,” Montez says wistfully. “It used to be the place.”
Montez will take on the circa 1904 building’s exterior this month, uncovering the original brick facade and huge storefront windows that were obscured by graveled panels in the 1960s. The old Senate sign will be pulled down and hung indoors, reflecting his decision to change the bar’s name to Riverwalk Restaurant to coattail on the Riverwalk’s marketing budget.
“It will always be the Senate, as far as I’m concerned, but for marketing purposes, it will be the Riverwalk,” says Montez, who also teaches at Pueblo East High School.
Inside, the bar’s walls are lined with historic pictures – of Pueblo, the bar’s various incarnations, city hall and the Vail Hotel next door, early businesses on Union and Grand Avenues, and newspaper people who worked in the building until 1938.
Two years after the Pueblo Star-Journal moved on, Frank and Anna Cash acquired the building and set up the Senate, naming it for the politicking that occurred there day and night. According to local legend, city council members would hash over matters at the bar and then go across the street and vote. “They’d make the deals here and go vote and then come back to the bar,” Montez says. Politicos reportedly drank, danced and gambled and perhaps availed themselves of “ladies of the night,” who purportedly worked upstairs.
The bar’s seamy history includes the murder of Frank Cash, who was gunned down from a long black car in 1942. His widow told reporters then that her husband had so many enemies it would be difficult to determine who might have fired the five shots. Some surmised Cash was shot because he was known for beating his wife.
In its day, the bar saw its share of celebrity patrons, including Clark Gable, who dropped in while he was stationed at Pueblo Army Air Base during World War II.
Montez and his father, Monte Montez, bought the bar in 1981 with the stipulation that its second owner, Joe Potestio, could live upstairs until his death. “We bought the building with him in it,” Montez says.
Father and son ran the place until Paul joined the Army. The son returned to help run the bar before his father’s death in 1999.
It is a place as filled with as much family history as local lore. “I have so many memories. There were people married here, retired here. There were quinceaneras here,” Montez says. “Any sort of event, it happened here.”
