Main Street in downtown Concord is the home to a sophisticated après work, après theater, après 4 p.m. restaurant and wine bar: 55 Degrees.

Shannon Drake, the owner of 55 Degrees, said the restaurant has received a warm welcome from Concord. It has only been open a short time and already the 49-seat capacity has been filled almost every night. Yet 55 Degrees’ success is not as impromptu as it appears; it is the result of five years work and careful planning by Shannon. Opening a restaurant, specifically a wine bar, has been a long-standing dream for Shannon. She said she has cultivated an interest in wine for the past 15 years, but adds that she has been passionate about fine food and cuisine her entire life.

Shannon worked in restaurants for 10 years when she was younger, but has spent the last 20 years working in the corporate world. When she decided it was time to realize her dream, Shannon resigned from her employment at J.P. Morgan Chase when she was ready to open 55 Degrees.

“The point I was at in my life was that it was time to do what I was passionate about. It was do it now or never do it, and the timing was there,” she said. “To wake up in the morning and look forward to going to work and enjoy what I do, and to be around food and wine was my major focus.”

Shannon wanted to open a restaurant in Concord because it “is an opportunity market.”

She explored many facilities and properties before she finally found the building on Main Street two years ago that she thought perfect for her future enterprise.

The building that now houses 55 Degrees was built in 1876 and bears many characteristics of the architecture of the day, including high ceilings with elaborate moldings and ornamentation, huge wood doors and wainscoting.

“It was originally a silversmith and they sold jewelry, clocks and silverware. In the late 1800s, they built onto the back of the building specifically to sell pianos.”

It took Shannon a year and a lot of help from friends to restore the building to its original splendor.

“We took somewhere around 20 tons of debris out of the building. We stripped all the walls downstairs because they had three layers: horsehair plaster, pegboard and slatted board. The ceilings also had horsehair, destroyed tin and a dropped ceiling, and we removed all that, too,” said Shannon.

The downstairs portion of the three-floor building has been stripped to the original supporting brick structure and acid washed, giving the restaurant the appropriate ambiance of a wine cellar. The floors were poured concrete when Drake first bought the building, but now they are covered with a gleaming Brazilian cherry wood floor.

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