Tripeny Building, Casper Wyoming

The building on the right, with the "Sanford's" sign, is the Tripeny Building. The Sanford's sign is covering the Tripeny name on the masonry, but it is there.  The tile work at the entry way, however, remains.

The Tripeny Building was built as an pharmacy, but the store was much more than that.  Still in operation when I was young, the store had a substantial jewelry counter and an old fashion soda fountain.  It was a neat place.  I can distinctly recall the juke box and a very old arcade game the store had in which the player attempted to shoot down bombers passing over a city.

After the death of the proprietor the store ceased operations and then became Giansanti's Pizzeria, a restaurant well remembered by Casperites of a certain age.  When Giansanti's ultimately closed, the location became the home of the Casper expression of Anthony's, a restaurant that had started in Jackson Wyoming (it can be seen, getting busted up, in the not so great movie Any Which Way But Loose).  Again, for Casperites, Anthony's was the Casper, not the Jackson, location, event  though they were both excellent.  The restaurant was always very popular and had a huge lunch crowd, but as with all restaurants, it too eventually closed.  Since that time, the building has been occupied by Sanford's, a regional restaurant chain that originated in Gillette with a restaurant called Humphrey's there, and which has expanded throughout the state.

Sanford's uses a style which involves featuring a lot of stuff in and outside of the restaurant in a manner that's clearly intended to recall the 1970s television show Sandford & Son.  For those who need a bit more of a clue, the menu titles provide it.  At this location it was involved in a bit of a spat with the city of Casper over an effort to convert its liquor license to a specialized cheaper variety intended only for restaurants, but the city gave it a bit of a bad time about that, resulting in the "$1 Pint" program, which must have been popular, as it continues on.  In spite of the big restaurant sign and the pint banner, observers can still pick up the details of the building if they look closely.

I'm not sure of this buildings age but I believe that it dates to the 1920s