More about the Capitol Bar

According to a pamphlet called "Historic Socorro" available at the Visitor's center, the Cap was established in 1896, is "made of stone and has a long and colorful history associated with the plaza and town" and was restored in 1993 following a fire caused by a lighning bolt.

And from a 2006 publication called "Old West Trails" is this little tidbit: "Built in 1896, it also doubled for a time as a courtroom and jail."

That was all a google search netted me, and it's just enough to make me want to know more. Without actually getting out of my chair, I was able to find several references to the Capital Saloon in a book called "Socorro, A Historic Survey" by John P Conron (published in 1980 by the UNM Press, for those who appreciate that kind of information.)

Socorro was going through a boom period in the 1890s, which is when the Capitol was built, and Conron talks about the availability of brick being key to the style of the commercial buildings that went up at that time. The bricks would have come by rail or been made by the Fire Clay Works in Socorro, and the architectural details would have included "corbel tables, arched windows that were often narrow in width and long, recessed panels, and dentillated coping." (p.22)

A corbel table is what I would think of as a "ledge-like thing"; coping is the capping or covering of a wall, and you're on the right track with dentillation if you think "teeth" - according to Wikipedia, a dentil is a tooth-shaped block used as a repeating ornament in the bedmould of a cornice. It occurs to me that better pictures are in order - I'll try to get some, soon.

The fire in 1993 and subsequent remodeling explains why I didn't feel the presence of inebriated ghosts. For some reason, I wonder if the Historic Socorro pamphlet wasn't wrong about it being built of stone - it makes more sense to me to put a brick facade on an adobe building than on one built of stone. I'll have to figure out how to do more research on this - and on the use of the bar for a courtroom and jail. That has a wild west vibe to it that I'd like to know more about.