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Denis Leidholt did more than  rebuild his casino in the aftermath of a fire that destroyed three buildings  on Miles City’s Main Street in 2009.

He raised up a building that captures the history of Miles City, in more ways  than one.

The building itself was designed to fit in with the old brick structures on  Main Street — right down to what looks like a bricked-over window on the east  side of the casino, but which was intentionally created to give the building an  antique feel.

Leidholt also salvaged cast-iron columns from the original building and used  them throughout the establishment, and he used salvaged bricks to decorate the  front bar. The big steel door from a walk-in safe, which was the only thing  standing in the middle of the bar after the fire, is set into one of the walls,  now strictly for ornament.

Along the top of the walls in the casino room itself, Leidholt’s designer,  Bruce Larsen of Billings, created a series of historical scenes from Miles City,  Butte and other parts of the state, finely detailed silhouettes cut into black  stainless steel.

As the crowning touch, he brought a huge collection of ornamental Jim Beam  whiskey bottles back to Miles City from Red Lodge, where it had been for 35  years. In specially made display cases lining the walls of the bar, the casino  and the stairwell leading to the second floor, 650 of the brightly colored  ornamental bottles are on display, grouped by theme — hunting, fishing, politics, automotive, states, cities, birds, trains and more.

Leidholt, who owns the Cellar Casino with his brother, Duane, said they were  just on the verge of having their final meeting on the building’s interior  design when he heard that the Jim Beam collection was available.

Pius Meier, the former owner of Natali’s Cafe and Lounge in Red Lodge, had  called Leidholt’s architect, Jim Bos of A&E Architects in Billings, to tell  him about the collection. A Miles City construction contractor originally had  the Jim Beam bottles on display at the Olive Hotel there, a few blocks down Main  Street from the Cellar Casino.

After the Olive changed hands in the late 1970s, the contractor took the  collection with him when he retired to Red Lodge and the bottles ended up at  Natali’s. Meier said he retired in 1996 and sold the business to a man who  opened a pizza restaurant. The pizzeria displayed the collection for a couple of  years, Meier said, but after that the bottles ended in Meier’s “huge, huge basement.”

Meier tried selling the bottles at a few Jim Beam collector conventions and  later on eBay, but everyone wanted just one bottle or a few at most, and Meier  wasn’t interested in piece-mealing the collection.

A reluctant Leidholt went to Red Lodge with his wife, thinking there was no  way, at that late date, of incorporating the bottles into his new casino. But  all it took was one look.

“We said, ‘These are too cool. We’ve got to do it,’” Leidholt said.

The collection totals 1,174 bottles, including a small number of Lionstone  whiskey bottles depicting historical figures from the American West. Leidholt  said they cherry-picked the best of the entire collection and put the rest in  storage.

Larsen, owner of the Big Idea Co. in Billings, designed the metal brackets  that hold the bottles inside the display cases. But the brackets had to be bent  to cradle the bottles, no two of which have identical shapes.

That meant it was a four-man job putting the 650 bottles on display: One  person bent the brackets and another ferried each bracket and bottle to two  other people who were on scaffolding to put each bottle in its place. The job  took two solid weeks, complicated by trying to fit bottles by theme and in such  a way that they looked good together.

“It became like a giant jigsaw puzzle,” Leidholt said.

Larsen designed the stainless-steel silhouettes, which he calls “scenery  valances,” by using photographs to make computer images, which were converted to  CAD files (for computer-aided design) by Shepherd Stainless Inc. The company  then used fine lasers to create the steel silhouettes.

The valances include images of Denton Field in Miles City, the water tower,  the original Cellar Casino building, cowboy scenes and even a representation of  Mere Image, a 1970s rock band that was based in Miles City and toured  regionally. It featured Leidholt on drums.

The rebuilt casino opened in June and Leidholt hopes to have the kitchen open  soon. Leidholt had a lot of fun designing the new building, but mostly he is  proud to have rebuilt at all in the wake of the devastating fire, which claimed  three historic buildings and nine businesses on the 700 block of Main  Street.

Leidholt, a native of Miles City, said he and his brother didn’t want to walk  away from Main Street.

“We knew if we didn’t rebuild on that spot, it was probably the beginning of  the end,” he said

 

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