Wiring a 2-wire outlet into a 3-wire receptacle

"The bridge between the screws was not broken" Are you 100% sure of that? Because the common use for black and red wires and a two-pole breaker in a kitchen outlet circuit is for a common neutral circuit (multiwire branch circuit), and shorting the two phases together with the new outlet would produce exactly the symptoms you have seen. So I'm going to suggest that the two sides of the old outlet are not actually connected, and if you don't have a meter you can check that with, I'll provide you an alternate test that does not involve looking at the connection, which you've already done and come to (I suspect) the wrong conclusion about:

Cap the red (or black) wire and connect only the black (or red) wire to the old outlet. Plug something into one receptacle, and see if has power. Then plug it into the other side. Repeat with the other wire (only) connected to the other side (only.) If I'm right, in each case, only half the outlet will have power, and which half will change with which screw you connect to.

It appears that the device you have probably only has one hot screw, so it cannot be connected the same way as the old outlet with two separate hots; so leave one wire capped off, or install it somewhere other than your kitchen (the reason for using this type of circuit in the kitchen is to provide more circuits to the countertop outlets - this device defeats that if it cannot have two separate hot feeds.)

With a 14/3 (white-black-red-ground) and 14/2 (white-black-ground) coming into this box, CoAstroGeek suspected that this might be a switched outlet. Exactly right.

There is a switch in the room next door that we had no idea what it was for. once i switched it on, there was power to the outlet. the short of it is- the room used to be the garage and was converted into an office 40 years ago. there are two switches on the wall in the room next door; one for an exterior light and one for that outlet. must have been an overhead light or something.