In 1880, William Moore and James N. Carlile sold an undivided one-half interest in three town lots to George W. Crites for $1, and in 1881 G. C. Eldridge sold a frame, one-story building with furniture and fixtures to South Pueblo National Bank for $500. The Schlitz Brewing Company built this building as a company-owned saloon, distinguished by a copper frieze across the front featuring Bacchus and other revelers and by the Schlitz globe near the top. Bullet holes later found in the frieze testified to the area's wild and wicked past. Colorado prohibition laws forced saloons and bars to close on January 1, 1916, three years before National Prohibition in 1919, ending a twenty-year effort by women's groups. Almost immediately a lively statewide moonshine business developed; Pueblo's sheriff confiscated thirty-five gallons of white whiskey valued at $9 a pint, and prunes were sometimes added to give the mixture color. During the Flood of 1921, federal officials allowed the consumption of liquor for medicinal purposes for thirty days. By 1921, Pueblo bootlegging arrests averaged more than one a day, and old-time businessmen reported that tunnels linked to old coal storage units under many Union Avenue stores were used to warehouse large inventories of liquor during Prohibition. The United States repealed Prohibition in 1933, and CCJLLC Properties purchased and completely restored the building in 1995.