On the corner is the Longnecker Building with interesting brick detailing and four handsome bay windows on its Plum Street side. At this point, Commercial Street has an unexplained jog and widening that leads some historians to believe the original Santa Fe Trail curved and continued down the narrow street behind Griego Insurance Building. Now known as Mill Street because of Marty Feed Mill, it ends at the railroad tracks on Cedar Street, but formerly continued down to the river, connecting to the original bridge spanning the stream some 200 yards east of today’s bridge. Two doors up from Plum Street at 234 Commercial is a building built by one of Trinidad’s most famous citizens, Casimero Barela, who was the area’s state senator for so long (1876-1914) that he became known in Denver as well as here as the Perpetual Senator. Before 1876, when Colorado became a state, he was the area’s representative to the Territorial Legislature and helped draft the State Constitution. His portrait is one of 16 that surround the rotunda of the State Capitol Building. A rancher and self-made man who became ever wealthier, he built this building in 1883.
One of the renters of the building (who later bought it) was another of Trinidad’s best-known citizens, Dr. Michael Beshoar, the first medical doctor in southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. Along with his many other activities, Dr. Beshoar founded Trinidad’s first daily newspaper, the Daily Advertiser, with his offices and presses in this building. Dr. Beshoar was not at all reticent about his opinions and he stated them boldly in his newspaper, leading to many heated arguments and attacks on him, both verbal and physical. They tell the story of when the doctor, a small man who normally carried a gun under the red vest he habitually wore, was surprised by an intruder who threatened him because of something printed in the paper. Dr. Beshoar was for once caught without his gun but reached into his hip pocket where he had a very sharp knife. To defend himself, he stabbed the man. Then, when the man was sufficiently subdued, he used his medical skills to repair the damage.
In recent years, the building has housed a series of businesses and stood vacant for some time. Most recently, it was renovated to be a fine art photography studio and upstairs living quarters, modernized with expansive windows but preserving the ornate lintels over the second story windows and the historic pressed tin cornice.