James R. DeRemer purchased the lot at 230 South Union Avenue in 1879 for $300 from Alphons Meyer, and the DeRemer Block was built there in 1882 in the Late 19th Century Commercial style by architects F. W. Cooper and Joseph Anderson, with F. T. Downing as contractor; Breed's Restaurant was located there in 1889. DeRemer played an important role in the Royal Gorge War when, while traveling down the Royal Gorge in his wagon, he saw the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad hauling ties and preparing to build through the Gorge, then rushed to Pueblo to inform General William Palmer, helping begin the struggle over the right of way that would control transportation of silver and gold from the Leadville and Cripple Creek mines. His most noted work was constructing the D. R. and G. tracks through the Royal Gorge and building the famous railroad hanging bridge that made passage through the Gorge possible, and he also had the DeRemer Opera House built, which burned down on February 12, 1899. At 232 South Union Avenue, the Holden Block #3 Site, built later by Delos Holden on the site of an earlier building, stood in an area known in the late 1800s as Real Estate Row, where businesses included Benson and Martin, C. H. Small and Williams, and Mollaby. The later Italianate multi-purpose building housed businesses ranging from saloons to a cat house to a barbershop; Pueblo residents in the 1940s remembered trolley riders being solicited by prostitutes from its second-floor windows. A man known as Barney the Bum died in the fire that destroyed the original building, and before the later building was demolished in 2001, it nearly burned down twice in fires of uncertain origin.