The Painted Brick Building Sides of buildings in Wyoming's towns and cities, and sometimes from other areas of the West.
An examination of old style advertising. . . as it looks today.
The original intent of this blog was simply to record the ghost signs of Casper, Wyoming. It did that pretty rapidly, and then it went on to catch them elsewhere and expand out a bit from there. Basically, we like historic buildings here.
One of the things we've noted, however, in doing this is that fables grow up around buildings. Sometimes it's really hard to figure out their origin.
I've been familiar with this building for over fifty years. It's one of three sister buildings in Casper that all were designed by the Casper architectural firm of Casper firm of Garbutt and Weidner, who at least based on these three buildings, were heavily into the same appearance for their "skyscrapers" at the time. This is the "ConRoy Building", the Consolidated Royalty Building. We noted its centennial several years, well nearly a decade, ago, elsewhere:
I've been meaning to post this forever but just wasn't in any big hurry to do it. Then it suddenly dawned on me that if I didn't do it soon, these places would be 101 years old, not 100. So here goes.
A thread dedicated to a few local places and establishments that made it to year 100 in 2017.
The ConRoy Building
The ConRoy (Consolidated Royalty Building). The building's appearance has changed somewhat, but you have to really observe it to notice the changes. The windows were replaced from the original style about fifteen years ago, giving it more modern and more efficient windows. The elevator shaft, not visible here, is an enlarged one to accommodate a larger elevator than the one put in when it was built in 1917. The awning restores the building to an original appearance in those regards which it lacked for awhile, but at street level the building has a glass or rock masonry treatment which clearly departs from the original.
One that I've mentioned here before is the ConRoy, or Consolidated Royalty Building. Built in 1917 as the Oil Exchange Building, the building was one of Casper's first "sky scrapers", if in fact not the absolute first. Ground was broken in the summer of 1917 and the building was completed some time in August 1917. The Consolidated Royalty Oil Company, a company in which former Governor B. B. Brooks had a major interest, occupied the fifth floor of the structure.
The ConRoy Building occasionally gets some interesting avian visitors.
Unlike its two sister buildings, the Wyoming National Bank Building (now apartments) and the Townsend Hotel (now the Townsend Justice Center) designed by the same architect, the building has never been vacant and remains in use today. At least one of the current tenants descends from a firm that was a very early tenant, and perhaps a 1917 tenant.
The building has been updated over time, and its appearance is slightly changed due to the addition of an odd decorative rock face in the 1950s, but it by and large looks much like it did in 1917 from the outside. It's one of the few old downtown Casper buildings that hasn't undergone major appearance changes over the years.
May 2, 1917 edition of the Casper Daily Tribune announcing vacancies in the yet to be built Oil Exchange Building. The remainder of this issue was full of war news, and indeed it was partially the oil boom caused by the war that brought the building about.
More recently it figured here, as the owners of the building commissioned some murals on the fire escape doors:
So how on earth does it end up in a political campaign?
Frankly, I have no idea, but the entire idea of it being built by "a Democrat" is a real wild one. The principal figure in the building being built was B. B. Brooks, who served as a Republican Governor for Wyoming, as we noted above. Brooks had his offices on the fifth floor of the building.
B. B. Brooks, Republican. He would not be amused.
This building has been continually occupied since 1917, and some of the businesses currently in it have been in the building since the 1940s although as earlier noted, one of them might have been in the building as early as 1917. Of the other two sisters, one is now the Townsend Justice Center which houses Natrona County's courts, and Wyo. Bank Bldg is an apartment building with a cafe on the street level.
All three buildings originally had, fwiw, massive period style lobbies which are sadly now all gone although you can catch glimpses of them, particularly in the Wyo. National Bank Bldg. The ConRoy once had a cigar store and magazine stand on the street level, after the lobby was taken out, and into the 50s, which explains the current appearance of its very small lobby today. Basically, the ConRoy and the Wyoming National Bank building were victims of "modernization" concepts in architecture from the 1950s and 1960s, at which time those buildings were forty years old and less, and nobody thought of them being particularly historic. The Townsend probably retained its architecture the longest, as it was a hotel originally, and up into the 70s when it closed. By that time it was pretty much a flop house with a popular cafe. I recall it as my father had lunch there until the cafe closed, which many other downtown businessmen and professionals did as well. It made for an odd place to go as a kid, which I sometimes did with my father, as the cafe was really popular, as was the adjoined Petroleum Club, but in the lobby the working girls were recovering from their prior night.
The ConRoy, on the other hand, has hummed on much like it has since 1917, although some of the notable early tenants, like the Casper Star Tribune, have moved on. The building was recently featured in the Oil City News when some of the equipment for a new elevator, replacing the one from the 1950s that replaced the one from 1917, was lifted by crane into the structure.
Anyhow, this is baffling. Of course, I only know of this as somebody else whose familiar with the building pointed it out to me and was horribly amused by it. I don't know that I am, as I like things to be accurate.
But why would a person do this, and how would such a wild rumor get started?
This building appears to be empty, and it also appears to have been divided into sections. The portion to the left of the photo was clearly once part of the overall business front.
That business was Casper's Piggly Wiggly. It appears to have been stores second location, an earlier one was downtown on 2nd Street.
At some point it became a tattoo parlor. I can recall it being that, but I can't recall when. The art advertising the tattoo parlor is horrible, so I doubt it attracted many customers in and of itself.
I've had to post this full size, or it would otherwise not be visible, given the distance, and the poor shooting position.
This large mural completed in 2017 depicts the Hawaiian Goddess of the Moon, Hina, who in Hawaiian legend guided sailors. It's located just outside of Pearl Harbor.
Casper has seen some murals enter its downtown space recently and this is a nice example. Don Juan's Mexican Restaurant, which has been in this location now long enough to be regarded as a Casper staple, had this very nice mural depicting scenes of Mexican rural life painted.
This mural is just across the street from the Women of Wyoming mural added last yeaer, which depicts a contemporary Native American woman, and just down the block from Jacob Reeb mural, so some of the diversity of Wyoming is being added through these depictions.
This train mural is on the Platte River Parkway that runs through downtown Casper along a rails to trails easement. The building is the 321 Art Works building, formerly an industrial warehouse.
Sponsored by: Representative(s) Conrad, Berger, Larson, JT and Sommers
A BILL
for
AN ACT relating to the legislature; authorizing the painting of a mural in the state capitol house chamber; providing an appropriation; providing requirements; creating a selection committee; and providing for an effective date.
Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
Section 1.
(a) Five hundred twenty thousand dollars ($520,000.00) is appropriated from the general fund to the legislative service office. These funds shall be used only for the purpose of the planning, design and painting of a mural in the house chamber at the Wyoming state capitol building. The mural shall depict the history of mining in Wyoming and shall match historically and artistically with the Allen True murals that are currently in the house chamber.
(b) The legislative service office, with assistance from the Wyoming arts council, shall issue a request for qualifications to commission an artist or artists to paint the mural specified in subsection (a) of this section.
(c) A selection committee consisting of the five (5) members of the management council who belong to the house of representatives and three (3) other non-legislative members as determined by the speaker of the house, with assistance from the legislative service office, shall select an artist or artists to paint the mural using criteria established by the selection committee. Members of the selection committee who are not members of the legislature shall receive the same per diem and mileage as members of the legislature traveling to and from meetings or while in actual attendance of meetings of the selection committee and during the performance of their duties relative thereto. The state building commission shall approve of the process to affix the mural required under subsection (a) of this section to the house chamber wall, pursuant to W.S. 9-5-106(e), before any alteration is made to the house chamber under this section.
(d) The funds appropriated in subsection (a) of this section shall not be transferred or expended for any purpose other than for the planning, design and painting of the mural required by subsection (a) of this section. Notwithstanding W.S. 9-2-1008, 9-2-1012(e), 9-4-207(a) or any other provision of law, the funds appropriated in subsection (a) of this section shall not lapse or revert until the mural required by subsection (a) of this section is complete.
The spectacular, but hard to photograph, mural Women of Wyoming in downtown Casper. It really must be seen, in part because It's hard to photograph it when it's not in shadow.
This is the memorial to civil rights activist James Reeb in Casper Wyoming. I should have taken this photograph when this mural was new, as its faded considerably since first painted, and it isn't even very old.
Given that, I'm taking the unusual step of posting it in full size here as well.
James Reeb was a Presbyterian minister in Casper when first ordained. He lost is life when murdered by segregationist in Selma, Alabama, where he was attending civil rights demonstrations, in 1965. The mural depicts scenes from his life, as well as honoring the Civil Rights movement.
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