Colorado's Oldest Brewery Building Is Getting Beer Again

1864. Auraria. A German immigrant named Moritz Sigi opens the Colorado Brewery on Tenth Street, and without knowing it, he lights the fuse on more than 150 years of beer in one building.

That building is the Tivoli. You have walked past it. Everybody who has ever set foot on the Auraria Campus has. It is the big brick beast on 10th Street, and this week it got some news that matters more than most people realize.

Recess Beer Garden announced Monday that it is opening a second location inside the Tivoli Student Union. They are calling it Recess Tivoli, and the plan is to open in August 2026, right before the fall semester kicks off. So the students walking in for their first classes get a beer garden waiting for them.

Here is the part people miss. This is not just some new bar opening in a college food court. This is beer coming home.

The oldest brewery in Colorado

Let me back up, because the Tivoli's story is wild.

The Colorado Encyclopedia calls this the first brewery ever built in Colorado, and the second in the entire nation. The roots go back to John Good, an immigrant who showed up during the 1858 and 1859 gold rush. Then Sigi opens his Colorado Brewery in 1864, and that is the seed that grows into the whole thing.

By 1900 the brand gets renamed Tivoli. In 1901 it merges with the Union Brewing Company and becomes the Tivoli-Union Brewery, named after Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. (Side note, I love that a Denver brewery reached all the way to Denmark for its name.)

And this place cooked. By the 1950s the Tivoli-Union was cranking out 150,000 barrels of beer a year. That is a serious operation.

Then the trouble. In 1965 the South Platte River flooded and hammered the operation. The brewery limped along a few more years and closed for good on April 25, 1969. Done. Over a century of brewing, shut off.

But the building survived. It got added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 11, 1973, and in the 1980s a renovation turned it into the student union it is today. Now it serves three schools at once, Metropolitan State University of Denver, the Community College of Denver, and the University of Colorado Denver, all sharing the same historic brick.

The comeback, and the comeback after that

The story does not end there, and this is where it gets interesting.

In 2012, Corey and Debbie Marshall bought the Tivoli trademark. They did not just want the name on a coaster. They wanted to brew again. And in 2015, after a 43 year absence, Tivoli Brewing fired up inside the building. Beer was being made in the Tivoli again for the first time since Nixon's first term. That is not nothing.

But running a brewery inside a landmark is hard. In December 2023, Tivoli moved its actual brewing operations down to La Junta, and the Auraria tap house eventually closed. A spot called Quad Side Tavern briefly took over, and it closed too.

So the beer taps in the birthplace of Colorado brewing went quiet again. Which brings us to right now.

What Recess is bringing

Recess Tivoli is stepping into that exact space, the one Quad Side Tavern and Tivoli Brewing used to hold down inside the student union.

If you do not know Recess, the original is over in the Lower Highlands at 2715 17th Street. This Tivoli spot is the second location. And the menu is coming with it. Their original smashburgers, sandwiches, appetizers, a full bar, plus patio seating. They are building it for the three obvious crowds. Between-class lunches for the students, game days, and after-work happy hours for everybody else.

Recess CEO and managing partner Jason Romero put it about as well as you can. He said the Tivoli "has been doing that in its own way for generations, which makes this an incredibly meaningful place for us to call home." And honestly, he is right. This building has been a gathering spot with beer in one form or another since Lincoln was in the ground barely a year.

Colleen Walker, CEO of the Auraria Higher Education Center, said they are "thrilled to welcome Recess Tivoli to campus." I would be too.

Why this one is worth your attention

Here is the real estate angle, because there always is one with a building like this.

The Tivoli sits at 1320 to 1348 10th Street on some of the most locked-in land in central Denver. Auraria is not going anywhere, and neither is the demand for a spot to eat and drink between a full slate of college campuses and a downtown right next door. A tenant in a National Register landmark is not signing up for a quick flip. You take the Tivoli because you want to be part of the story, and because the foot traffic is baked in.

So next August, when Recess Tivoli opens its doors, you will be drinking a beer in a room that has been pouring them, on and off, for more than a century and a half. The flood tried to stop it. A 43 year gap tried to stop it. It keeps coming back.

Buckle up. The oldest brewery building in Colorado is about to get loud again.