The Townsend Hotel

This is the Townsend Hotel, in Casper. The building was built as a substantial, modern hotel, in the 1920s, but fell into disrepair and dilapidation by the late 1970s. It's a classic example of a typical midwestern mid 20th Century hotel. It features prominently in many pre 1950 photographs, as viable in our flagship photo above.

This building was abandoned in the early 1980s, but it is currently under renovation and is being converted to a courthouse for Natrona County. The project has been somewhat controversial, and efforts to expand courthouse facilities in general have not been popular with the voters in the county, who rejected tax levies for the project. The existing 1930s vintage courthouse is across the street, but is not featured here, as it doesn't fit within this blog's mission.

This sign advertises not only the hotel, but the cafe. The cafe in the hotel was one of the last things operating in it, and was still in use up until the early 80s. Where the large excavation is in these photographs, there was once a private club, the Petroleum Club, which could be accessed through the hotel. The Petroleum Club still exists, but moved out of this location over twenty years ago.

In the historic photos, showing the Townsend in its heyday, this view would not have been possible. A Greek revival style office building, The Sinclair Building, would have blocked the view. It was removed in the early 1990s.

Welcome to Painted Bricks

This blog exists as a format to publish photo of buildings in Casper, Wyoming, although it is possible some other interesting buildings from around the state will be published here as well.

The concept here was to memorialize, originally on a website we never got around to, photographs of buildings here in town that still retained painted brick sides. These were once very common in nearly every American city, but over time, have fallen very much out of favor. Some such paintings can constitute real artwork, in and of themselves, but most of them simply amount to advertising of a certain distinct, historical, style.

As time goes on, these paintings fade, are painted over, or sandblasted away. Indeed, there are fewer of them now, than when we first thought of this idea about a year ago. Sometimes, even efforts to save the "historic appearance" of a building can destroy them, as the new owners sandblast them off to return the building to its "original look".

None of these signs amount to anything of great historic interest. But they are artifacts of another era, and we hope you enjoy them.