Cascade Saloon: A long decline, a bright future
Cascade Saloon, 408-410 S. Elm Street
The Cascade Saloon is a downtown Greensboro landmark. Built in 1896, it has been the home of saloons and a billiard parlor, cafes and grocery stores, a cigar factory, a coal company, and more.
By 2001, decades of neglect had left the building a rotting shell. The Fund joined City of Greensboro in a long struggle to save and secure a future for an irreplaceable downtown icon.
It took more than 10 years for the city to secure ownership of the building from an owner determined to neither fix it or sell it. Its condition was so desperate that some engineers and developers said it couldn’t be saved. Yet, it took only a year for the Fund to find a buyer with the expertise and commitment to restore it. In 2015, the Christman Company, a construction firm based in Lansing, Michigan, took on the Cascade Saloon to be its new regional office. Christman was experienced in historic restoration and appreciated the history of the building.
“Renovations to the three-story building located at an urban crossroads presented significant technical challenges to the construction team,” the company says in its account of the project.
‘A rather imposing three-story brick building’:
An Illustrated History of the Cascade Saloon
“Operating between two busily functioning railroad tracks adjacent to the site, stabilization of the historic masonry structure, working with extremely limited space for construction materials and deliveries, and replication of the historic exterior cornice were just some of the key project challenges that the team overcame. A construction approach of ‘building a ship in a bottle’ was used to erect a new support structure inside the historic brick walls.”
Christman’s $4.2 million restoration was completed in 2018. It received financial support from City of Greensboro, Downtown Greensboro Inc. and the Marion Stedman Covington Foundation. State and federal tax credits also helped make the restoration possible.