Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — Adam and Kristen Cold spent months searching for the right location for them to set up their idea for an American bistro with a "unique twist" to French cuisine.
The couple who met at Utah Valley University initially thought they'd open a location in Utah County, but that all changed when they found a property in Salt Lake City's Central City neighborhood, a few blocks east of downtown. It was a recently renovated one-floor structure with white walls and dirty floors, but they saw charm.
"I felt like the property matched my aesthetic and style of food quite well," said Adam Cold.
They agreed that this would be where they'd establish Roux Restaurant (515 E. 300 South), which opened in February.
But those who come to dine here for the restaurant's brown butter rainbow trout or fennel-crusted pork loin may not know they're sitting in a piece of Salt Lake City history or one that was vacant for years until a local developer scooped it up and refurbished it with the help of a federal program that incentivizes historic preservation.
The Midgley House
Roux is the newest use for the Midgley House, an adobe structure that Joshua Midgley completed in 1882 before Central City experienced its first wave of apartments. Midgley was a well-respected interior painter and wallpaper hanger in the 19th century, whose work included the Salt Lake Temple.
The home remained with the family for over a century, even becoming an office space for Paul Evans, a prominent 20th-century architect, during the mid-1900s. However, it had also become vacant by the late 1980s.
It was worse for wear by the time Jeff Taylor purchased the property in 2018. The home was mostly boarded up, and it had all sorts of water damage throughout as its adobe exterior began to crumble. A large portion of its porch had burned in a fire. Its interior wasn't much better, either.
"It was an absolute hobble," Taylor told KSL.com, reflecting on its state at the time.
Taylor liked the location, so he went through with the purchase, but he wasn't quite sure what he'd do next when he came into contact with Amber Anderson, the technical preservation manager for the Utah State Historic Preservation Office.
Anderson was driving by the area when she saw Taylor doing early work on the home. She pulled over and offered a rundown on the home's ownership history and the ways it could be preserved.
The Midgley House isn't on the National Register of Historic Places itself, but it's within a historic district that is. That made any preservation project potentially eligible for state or federal tax incentives that can help property owners recoup large chunks of the renovation costs.
Having already purchased historic properties and falling more in love with the home's story, Taylor decided he'd go for it.
"It all just came together," Anderson said.
Preserving a piece of history
Taylor, his assistant, Brad Peterson, and subcontractors did most of the renovation work themselves, saving them renovation costs and also giving them something to pass the time during the COVID-19 pandemic.
They restored the home's wooden double-hung windows, adding storm windows on top for better energy performance. They also repaired its frame after the masonry firm Atkinson-Noland & Associates reviewed the structure's original materials and suggested the right products to match how it was built. Some of the materials were hard to find and imported from Europe.
"It was quite a process," he said, summing it all up as he pointed to the building's white exterior, which got its color from a lime wash after it went through a similar method as when it was first built.
The home also went through a seismic upgrade. Taylor said the structure fared well during the 2020 earthquake, which occurred while the renovations were happening.
The National Park Service, which operates the National Register of Historic Places program, recently awarded Taylor $50,000 in credits that can be used on future federal taxes. It will essentially help him recoup about one-sixth of the total preservation cost.
Finding a new use for an old building
Taylor began to envision flipping it into a nice sit-down restaurant space before renovations wrapped up in 2023, but he wasn't in a hurry to complete the project because the pandemic also heavily disrupted that industry. It's also why he offered it up as a potential office or retail space just in case.
It sat on the market for a few months before the Colds came calling, turning it into the type of place Taylor initially wanted.
"I saw the charm and the vision with this space," said Kristen Cold, as she and her husband prepared to open on Thursday.
They moved in late last year, sprucing the place up with a chic interior design capped with local art before opening. With a 4.7-star rating on Google, they hope Roux blends into a part of the city known for finer dining experiences.
Not every project may be worth the cost or steps he went through, Taylor says, but he's thrilled with the outcome — as is Anderson. She sees it as an example of how historic buildings can be reimagined instead of thrown away.
"Someone could have easily torn this building down ... and we would have lost all this historic fabric," she said. "(People can) step inside this building that takes them back to the past and connects them with history in a more tangible way."
