"This project started with a simple idea: create a spot in the neighborhood people would really want to spend time in." That's John Goscha, standing in the newly retiled annex of the Tears-McFarlane House on the morning his café opened. He lives a few blocks away. He's been eyeing the Morgan's Historic District since he was a kid. The quote reads like the start of every small-business origin story Congress Park has heard before.
Two Cafés, One Address
The space at 1290 N. Williams Street has now hosted two different restaurant concepts in under three years, both under the same commercial landlord: City Street Investors. Secret Garden Bar & Café opened there in August 2024 to instant popularity, its patio backing directly onto Cheesman Park's north lawn. It closed on October 10, 2025. City Street Investors remains the landlord for The Carriage House.
Ten months later, the café has new operators, a new look, and a new menu.
If you've walked past that patio a hundred times, the building's longer history is worth knowing before you order a coffee there this fall.
What Actually Happened, In Order
- 1976: The mansion earns National Historic Landmark status.
- 1977: The City of Denver purchases the building, folding it into public ownership.
- 2005: Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods, the nonprofit founded in 1969 to preserve the character of the surrounding blocks, takes over day-to-day management.
- 2015: CHUN assumes full management responsibility, but the aging mansion's upkeep costs outpace what the nonprofit can cover alone.
- 2021: CHUN partners with City Street Investors on a major renovation, bringing a private commercial operator into a public building for the first time.
- August 2024: Secret Garden Bar & Café opens under that arrangement.
- October 10, 2025: Secret Garden closes.
- July 28 to August 6, 2026: The Carriage House opens in phase one, under new operators Goscha and Jake Riederer, with City Street Investors still holding the lease.
- September 2026: Phase two arrives, adding a full cocktail bar and later hours.
Laid out that way, the story isn't only about a café closing and a café opening. It's about a public landmark that has spent decades finding ways to stay in daily use.
What's Genuinely Different This Time
The operators are. Goscha financed The Carriage House himself, with no outside investors, a choice he's been direct about in interviews. Riederer brings a résumé built inside Denver's independent restaurant scene: Work & Class, Congress Park Market, Super Mega Bien, OPEN Sandwiches. The menu came together with Melissa Yanc, a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist known locally for Quail & Condor, who developed dishes like a French onion grilled cheese served with onion consommé for dipping and a North African tuna pan bagnat loaded with olives, artichoke hearts, and preserved lemon.
The build-out is also a genuine renovation, not a rebrand over old bones. White marble counters replaced whatever Secret Garden had. A Parisian-style checkerboard floor went in. Oversized French doors are slated to open the interior directly onto the park view once phase two lands in September. Coffee comes from Novo Coffee, roasted for the shop. Pastries come from Black Box Bakery. None of that existed in this configuration eighteen months ago.
And Goscha has said publicly that all profits from The Carriage House will go to local community causes.
What This Means for the Rest of the Year
Practically, if you live near Cheesman Park, here's what's actually different starting now versus what's coming. Phase one, live since early August, gets you coffee, sandwiches, salads, pastries, and a retail case with bottled wine and six-packs you're allowed to carry out into the park itself under existing park policy, open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Phase two, arriving in September, adds the full cocktail bar, a longer happy hour, and extended hours into the evening, along with those French doors connecting the dining room directly to the patio.
That's a real, useful thing to know if you're planning a fall picnic pickup or wondering when this becomes a place to grab a drink after work rather than just a morning coffee stop.
If you're weighing what a home near a park like this is actually worth, not just in square footage but in the kind of daily life it supports, that's a conversation Buildings & Residences of Denver has with Congress Park buyers and sellers all the time. Contact us when you're ready to talk about it.
