This is a fairly substantial structure in the small town of Granger, Wyoming.
Granger is an old locality for Wyoming. It was a Pony Express stage stop, and the stage building is still there (which unfortunately I didn't realize until after I'd driven out of town). The town is small, and the population of about 140 has stayed constant for the entire 20th Century and into the 21st.
Whcih makes a building like this a peculiarity.
When I took this photo, because of some of the features of the building, I thought it was an abandoned church, and I had intended to post it on our Churches of the West site. But later I reconsidered as I'm not so sure of that. It doesn't really have a steeple, not that all churches do. It has some very church like features, but this could also have served some other purpose. I'll note the other side made me, at the time, even more convinced this was a church, but as the house is now apparently used as a private residence, I didn't want to linger while photographing, particularly as a curious dog inside the building was taking note of me on the street. I should also note, however, that on one side is a branch of the Sweetwater County Library, and on the other side is the Granger town hall. Maybe this was a government building at one time? Maybe it was a school?
So, what do we have here? If you know, post the answer.
4 comments:
There use to be a bar in the basement Called the Church bar, my parents own it. The bar has been closed for a long time now. My mom knows more history about it then I do. :) never thought I'd see a blog about the home I lived in, pretty neat to read.
Hello i can tell you that this building was built in 1924 with the intentions of being a church . It was home to Granger school for years . i think it was in the late fifties early 60s Clarice and Martin Tyler took ownership of the building and remodeled the lower part into a bar and the upstairs into living quarters . They closed the bar in July of 2001 and my fiancee and i purchased it in 2003 .
Thanks for your replies!
I was surprised by two replies on this on the same day. All the more so as I just went by Granger the other day for the first time since I posted these photos.
Funny. In 2009 my husband and I drove across country from Tacoma, WA to Washington DC and back. On the way east, we drove through Granger and stopped at the Pony Express station and snapped a photo. Soon after the trip, I named all of the "keeper" photos and moved others into "culls." Today, I was finally getting around to creating a real slide show of the trip and decided to check the "culls" file for any pics that could be salvaged with more modern photo editing. I stumbled across a perfectly fine picture of this building in my "culls" folder. I wanted to find out what it was and ended up on your site. Now that I know more, the photo is going into the slide show. Thanks for the info everyone.
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