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New restaurant The Shakopee House has history in its walls

New restaurant The Shakopee House has history in its walls
New restaurant The Shakopee House has history in its walls 02:01

SHAKOPEE, Minn. -- There's a new restaurant in Shakopee that was not ready to let go of its past.

When owners started renovating the old Dangerfield's, they discovered a treasure of artifacts in the walls.

The Shakopee House is a new restaurant in town, but the building itself is historic. It's more than 100 years old. When new owners stepped in to renovate, they found that history literally within its walls.

"The original plan was just to do Dangerfield's and continue on and just make it our own, but we just couldn't help ourselves once we got into the space and started discovering things," Tony Donatell with Eyes Wide Hospitality said.

Things like a hidden doorway disguised as a bookshelf and a suitcase from the 1920s belonging to a man named Lawrence Cumberbatch.

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"We were just in awe. It was just unbelievable," Donatell said.

Clues inside told a story. Cumberbatch was a rum runner and a former bartender of the Mill Pond Club, the first restaurant to call the building home.

"You can tell he was passionate about what he had learned and his adventures and his journey," Donatell said. "He put together recipes for cocktails. He had rum in there, he had post cards from his travels and his adventures. We used what we found and some of the stories from his family to create the rum row concept for the basement."

The story checks out.

"Prohibition affected Scott County just like it did the rest of the country at the time, however, Scott County had a very large Czech and German population and both of those cultures really valued their alcohol," Annie Weier from the Scott County Historical Society said. "So they didn't take too kindly to the prohibition rules."

Rules of an era felt in every room.

"History is all around us, happening all of the time," Weier said. "But you sometimes have to look for it."

 And a dream brought back to life.

"I feels like he was one of us," Donatell said. "It's almost like a tribute to somebody in his industry." 

The Shakopee House is open now, and you can see some of those historic artifacts on display.

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