Main Street, Wyoming; 513; Wyoming Architecture

Mainstreet Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy. Proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history values and ideas. Join us as two very special guests visit our studios and take us across the state where there are words and pictures of Wyoming's architecture. You'll see our state's unique and special buildings through the eyes and lens of experts. And you're certain to gain new perspectives on Main Street Wyoming. I.

Wyoming's history is filled with folks just drifting through our state whether it's Native Americans mountain men Cowboys oil men railroaders one thing they all had in common was a lack of attachment to the brick and mortar of civilization found back east. They were people on the move but some stayed some settled and some built. Which brings us today's program. Our guests are Eileen Starr and Richard Collier who've spent countless hours researching traveling writing and photographing Wyoming's architecture. And they produced this wonderful book. I really enjoyed reading it. Eileen can you tell me you were the writer on the project how on earth did you ever come up with the idea of doing this. I worked for the state for about 13 years now and after working for the state I realized that people didn't realize what was out in Wyoming. There are so many interesting buildings there's such a variety. So I felt that if if people understood more about wirings architecture that perhaps more of it would be preserved.

And this was a good way of getting the information out. Well I guess that's why we're here today is to look at some of these buildings and to see them through your eyes. Now Richard you were the photographer on that project camera. Can you tell me what it was like when you went out to these Wyoming communities and tell people you wanted to take a picture of their building. Well sure a lot of people say why would you want my pick my building. And I said well it's either going to be on the national register where I shoot most of these or it's going to be changed or it's going to be torn down or it's just an interesting building. I see well I'm. And so I stop buying and asking if that if I could come in most of the time people say Sure no problem. Well do people in Wyoming view their own buildings as important. Not necessarily. No. So it's projects like this that help you know educate people about the past. And people are really excited to see their own buildings in print.

Well I know that I really enjoy the buildings and of course many of them. I think people across Wyoming have seen it. Many of them we've never seen or some of them perhaps driven by and you never realized quite how special it was. Can you tell me. Let's begin by looking at some of them I think that's probably the best idea. There's some that you found that were your favorites or that were that really were significant architecturally. Sure. Let's talk about the old faithful in which is at Yellowstone National Park and it's a building that's nationally significant because of its architecture. Old Faithful. Is a national historic landmark. It was constructed between 1993 and 1994. When you look at Old Faithful and you'll notice that there's a really prominent gable roof for the gable is sort of the V-shaped roof and it's a huge roof but it actually fits in with the environment around Old Faithful. And because of the use of of native materials the architect was Robert Bremer who was hired by the railroad to build that specific structure. And not only is it interesting on the outside but when you walk into the lobby and you look up

you notice all these interesting balustrades which are the railings around the walls and up pieces of log that we use disorientations. It's seven stories with inside the lobby of Old Faithful. It's a fascinating building and the it acted as sort of a model for other architecture in the national park systems. So it's it's not just important to Wyoming. It really is nationally significant on something like that. I can't even begin to conceive of building a structure like that at the turn of the century with that kind of height. Do you know anything about that story. Well I know that they built it during an unlikely period. It was over the winter of 1993 and they wanted or needed housing in the park and that's where they started during the winter. What's interesting is that they use the locally available materials and yet they had an architect designed it. So there's the technological advances. So there are metals in that building.

It's not all bog but it looks like log. So it's sort of a high style rustic architecture it looks rustic but it's designed by an architect. Well when you go to take a picture of something that is of national significance Richard how did you approach the problem of getting a picture that would be used for this book. Well actually we when we photographed this we photograph it long before we decided to vote. And I was also to do some other work and we didn't have any photographs of. OK. So I figured well I'm here. And I shot a few exteriors and I had a great time shooting the interior. I got up on the second floor and photographed the lobby with people walking around. The exposure was about 38 seconds so you can see people standing still and see ghosts. But there you can see the rafters from the floor up to the very top. And it's really a great building. Joe

Stimpson was a photog from Wyoming the century who had some interiors I think mine are a little better. But. For those camera in the audience what kind of equipment do you use for the photographs that you could use a four by five view camera. The negative is four inches by five inches so you can. The quality of the prints are much better. And you can control distortion or perspective with with a with a for about five because the front tilts the lens board and the film plane both tilt. So if you notice when you look at a building a tall building and take a picture that it seems to pyramid where you can control that with this camera. It has a lot of controls with the camera and the camera itself is probably about $5000 without a lens. And so that's fantastic. What's another building that you can think of in Wyoming that is either significant architecturally or really very

very unique. Let's talk about the Parko in which is in St. Clair Wyoming and in fact it's not just the end itself it's that's interesting but the whole town there are architects from Denver who were hired by an oil magnate to design all of the town of Sinclair. Actually I used the word Sinclair and Parko interchangeably originally the town's name was Parko then it was changed to Sinclair later. But they designed a company town that's very steadily pleasing. It's a beautiful place. It's Spanish colonial architecture and the inn is the center of the town. There's a plaza in front of the inn and there are four storey towers on either side of the inn. You walk inside the Parko you'll notice that there hand painted rafters and beams. You can see it's very interesting. They did the whole town that way. The theater the church the school and lots of houses that contribute to the whole architectural

sense of parko. Oh this is this is as I'm listening to you I'm going this makes me kind of really bad as I go zooming along the interstate or the roads of Wyoming that I'm missing something like that that I just take a very very short little journey to go over and see that wasn't it. It really would. In fact a great deal of the town is on the National Register of Historic Places as an historic district. And what's interesting when Fisher and Fisher designed Parko so they designed the whole community to work together. The commercial buildings the governmental buildings and the residential buildings. And you can tell the bungalows the brick bungalows where the the the management houses where as the workers lived in in smaller sort of four room houses. Well I'm going to I'm going to make a point of going and saying that that's great. What about from other buildings. Oh there's the Sheraton in insured in Wyoming recently the Sheraton in was awarded the Maureen Karli historic conservation award by the Women's State Historical Society. It's noteworthy because of its unusual design. It was done in

1893 and designed by an Omaha architect. But if you look at the Sheridan it has a very distinctive roof line and all those dormers that are on the second and third story are a tractor. It's a massive structure and it was very important to the social component of Sheraton's lifestyle and of course Buffalo Bill will stay there. Other noteworthy folks in the late 19th century. And it's also a national story landmark because of its associations with with famous people but also architecturally. Now Richard is I'm looking at the picture. It looks to me like I would be very difficult to get that wide picture without any obstructions because of the time period in which it was built. Did you have any problem with any of that trying to take pictures of buildings and things have changed enough that you really couldn't get that kind of a shot. Yeah there's one in Lusk there's a Carnegie library that's really great with corner France to story and over the years they planted two

pine trees in front and they've grown up and you can't see the building and you get to the point where you want to practice what we call chainsaw photography where you actually you can see the building and there are quite a few buildings like that around the state that because of trees or brushes you really can't get a good photograph of them. So I've never really gotten a good photograph of the Carnegie Library there. One of these days the trees are going to die. I'm not going to come down. I'm going to go and photograph it. I'm sure the people in your office are really glad to hear about this. In Wyoming I think some of our trees are as precious as some of our buildings to us because we don't have very many just now. What's another building that you can think of that we'd be interested in hearing about. I mean there's the Union Pacific depot in Cheyenne which is on the National Register of Historic Places and it's currently being renovated. They are turning this massive depot into a transportation museum and it's an ongoing project.

Dean Pacifica's donated the building to the project and it's noteworthy because of its architectural style and the person who designed the building. Or people who designed it Tom designed by first name Van Brunt and how. It's not only important from a state perspective but if you look at the Rocky Mountain West and look at the type of buildings in the Rocky Mountain West that's a really unusual looking train depot in the architectural history jargon. They call it Romanesque revival and that's because of the stonework on it and the rounded arches and that dramatic tower in the middle of it. It's very unusual. And Wyoming is really very fortunate to have such a relic that is left. Was there a period of time when the railroad companies built those at that style that you've described across the country or was this just a unique went in and of itself were the architects who designed this building were hired by the head of the Union Pacific Railway corporation to build a string of depots.

But this one is largely because of Cheyenne's importance at the time and they also wanted to make something very significant. You know in Cheyenne we joke about the fact that the capital is at one end of capital Avenue and the railroad depot which is a very impressive structure is at the other end of the street. They keep an eye on each other. It's interesting in terms of town planning and what was important and important in terms of power. It's not necessarily a coincidence that this is the way that it was laid out. Right now I know that one of the things that you had to deal with in your book there is just so many different ways to categorize the different types of architecture in the state. How did you go about doing that and what are the categories that we could that we could think about in our own communities when we look around. People tend to focus on buildings that are architect designed like the ones that we just discussed. Everybody can probably relate to Old Faithful in or the Union Pacific Depot but it's the other buildings the ones that we live in every day that aren't necessarily appreciated. So we made an

effort to talk about the other types of architecture vernacular architecture is what it's called. And we broke them into various categories. Most of our environment is constructed of buildings called manufactured architecture. We use the term manufactured because. It describes the whole process that was involved in terms of building it. You could buy plans you could buy the materials and via the Union Pacific Railroad or other railroads in Wyoming they arrived there. Our concept that we had in Wyoming now whether it's mobile homes or modular homes is not a new concept. No it certainly is not. In fact after the industrial revolution in the United States let's say the 1840s 1850s the way we constructed our buildings changed dramatically. It also became in some ways simpler. And what people could put on their buildings in terms of ornamentation changed a great deal. So when you look at a Victorian house there's sort of a misnomer today that people think oh that was all hand carved. No it was all

machine made and it was available at the local lumber yard or through various catalogs at the time. You can even go to the American Heritage Center in Laramie and look at the collection of Montgomery Wards catalogs and see what kind of houses or barns or other outbuildings that you could purchase and then have them ship it in and constructed on site can you give us some examples of some different manufactured houses that we see around Wyoming. Yeah I'd be glad to. This is the fairest mansion and the fairest mansion that is manufactured housing. The design was is from Barber and clots in Tennessee. What's noteworthy is that it's a great example of what we call Victorian architecture with the rounded towers and there's a tile roof and there's all sorts of surface ornamentation on that particular building to make it someplace you really want to go to to to look at. With the fairest mansion.

That's example of Queanbeyan architecture. And that first family bought the plans from the firm in Tennessee and have constructed that house in Rollinson. It's probably one of the most noteworthy Victorian buildings not only in Rollin's but in the state. The material it was not one that came in pieces that they put together they just bought the plants they brought the plants but they also imported the brick from Colorado and they're also around the edges of the porch. What we call fretwork or the Declaration on the porch that would have purchased from a catalog a lot of the ornamentation would have just been brought in manufactured somewhere else and brought in to Wyoming. Now Richard you remember when you took that picture of that house. Are there people living there now or. Yes in fact it's a bed and breakfast and that the picture we have now I shot it was low last year as part of the district. They're doing a historic district in Rawlins and I photographed that for the district. So now I understand you have over 11000 photographs that

you've taken around the state of Wyoming just 11000 to 300 something like that. They're all former Black and Whites of historic sites historic buildings districts archaeological sites petroglyphs things that are historic and important to the state. And I've got probably 2000 color transparencies also about negatives. I'm really I'm really glad that Wyoming has that kind of an historical legacy to pass on to future generations. Well that was thanks to Mark Young who is our deputies start preservation office officer and in the 70s he thought he'd be a great idea to get really good equipment to document the state for future historians. That's great because I know how much we appreciate looking at some of the buildings that were here 50 60 100 years ago that are no longer there. So we don't know what will happen to these buildings.

There's a lot of them that are gone. The only thing left is the photographs that we have in our collection. Can you give me one other example of a manufacturing and I want to get into your other categories. Let's take a look at the Anna Miller museum or the it's also called the Wyoming Army National Guard stables up in New Castle Wyoming. We use this as an example of manufactured architecture because of the plans that were generated probably as part of the quartermaster general's office. And in fact when you go to New Castle you can take a look at the plants themselves. It's an interesting stables because the caretaker lived there in the stables. It was built in 1933 and we think about the the cavalry and the fact that this is only a few years before World War 2 and they're still constructing cavalry stations makes it interesting beyond its architectural significance. But historically and the plans were generated in Washington and re-used over and over. If you take a look at if you

were an Air Force Base or if you look at the cavalry station stables excuse and you see how things were duplicated over and over again. What about some of the buildings around the state I guess in your book you call them folk architecture. What is that. What does that category include when you think of folk architecture. I like to think of use of local materials and also people who learned the tradition of building in a in a in a family way or in a traditional way perhaps the father taught a son how to assemble stone or to work with logs. And there are wonderful Scandinavian craftsmen all over the state who just left a legacy in terms of the log work work all through the state. Can you think of a specific one. Piece or piece barn that you find at Rock Creek or at Arlington are supposedly constructed by man by the name of Uncle Pete Rayner's and the

story is that he was probably one of the Scandinavian tie hacks who did this sort of work during the summer. What's unique about the Arlington barn is its construction It's called Peace or peace or peace or peace because of its use of logs on the side of the building. Normally that kind of construction is only used rarely. And that would be in military structures but in Wyoming the Scandinavian craftsman probably picked up the technique from Fort Sanders and then used it on large log barns that were used for horses. So how does that structure. That structure was built in the 1880s So it's over 100 years old. My goodness that's fantastic. What's another example you can think of. Let's take a look at the false front building in New fork which is in Suffolk County. It's the Valhalla dance hall. It was built around 1989 1910 and it was built by Danish craftsmen. There's a whole town site

in New fork where Danish folks built stores and their houses and schools. And as New York prospered they built a dance hall and for a long time it was used as a dance hall and for political rallies and then it wasn't used then the Richy family purchased it in the 70s and started local dances there. I noticed on the false front can you talk a little bit about that because I know that many of our community southpaws false friends were there but they're hidden by some other material. Was that something that was unique to the west or was it a time factor or what. No you'd find false friends constructed in the 19th and early 20th century and probably any place in the United States especially in rural areas. It's not just limited to Wyoming or the West. A false front gives you the sense that that building is actually larger than it really is. That's why you have a tall wall on the front of it. And frequently those walls were used to advertise the goods that were sold in that particular building.

Is there another particular example you can think of that we might enjoy seeing the oak architecture. Sure let's take a look at the Auburn church in Lincoln County in the Star Valley. It was constructed around 1889. And you don't find many stone buildings in the Star Valley. This particular Mormon Church was constructed by the local Mormons there and is one of the oldest stone buildings or one of the oldest buildings and in that part of Lincoln County that remains may use locally available stone in the construction of that. That's what I was going to ask is why there aren't very many stone buildings there. The construction material that's easy to get to would be belongs. And as this building currently being used by the church yes. How long did it take. You had taken some of the photographs for that for that book prior to the beginning of the writing of the book. How long did this project take you Richard in terms of gathering the additional photographs.

Well I've been working for the state for the print version of us for about 11 years actually. And a lot of the photographs were things I've shot for the National Register. That's another part of my job. And we had in our files when Eileen wanted to put the book together we went through and picked out the photographs we thought would be best suited for the article or for that magazine. The books are. I know that that has to be the criteria for how it ended up in the book. How did you decide which ones. Because I understand you have boxes of photographs and things that you could have included. How on earth did you make the final cut. It was an agonizing process. We had hundreds of photographs and lots of things that we wanted to illustrate. And actually the book turned out to be exactly 100 pages longer than it was supposed to be. This was the publisher that had to deal with that. Now is the National Endowment for the arts who actually paid for the publication of some of the book. And our office paid for the rest but we told them it to be a hundred

pages long but it was very difficult because one had to show various parts of the state the different types of architecture that you find. And then we wanted Richard's best photographs. We wanted to represent every corner of the state. We didn't leave anybody out. You know so that was a consideration. And then the quality of the photographs a lot of times when I go out if I shoot if I see a building I shoot it it doesn't matter what time of day it is the light may not be right. You know it might be overcast. I don't have the luxury of waiting for the light. So some of the photographs weren't that good because of lighting or or overcast skies bad weather. But we still had to shoot it right there. I have to ask this was there a favorite house that you were not able to include. There is one particular building in through my office that I think Richard and I've grown to love it's the lone house and it's a building that was recently put on the National Register of

Historic Places. Well it's not the only one that we would have liked to included in the book. There are many many others but the house was constructed by a man by the name of Alex Malone or Halonen his. He was Finnish. He came to the United States and used his skills as a stonemason on the house that he would display different types of stone construction on the house. You know he'd use river rock and part of the house or he would use oh ashlar stone in a different part. And he illustrates it on all four sides of the building so it's fascinating. So it's not enough just to see the front. You really have to go all the way around the house to fully appreciate what they did right. That's great. I know that the clones and we were talking about it earlier was a multigenerational family that was involved in some work and through Mopsus. Well I feel like everything that you've shared with me today has almost been a very quick trip across the state of Wyoming. And I know that if any of our viewers are interested and there is so much more that we could have talked about in knowing about the architecture in the

Cowboy State what's a good time of year in terms of going out and trying to see things. Sometimes it's the winter because the trees don't have a leafs on them you know for some buildings. Others probably this summer because you can't get to them because of the snow. You know a lot of ranchers it's hard to get out too and people don't like to go out on their ranches sometimes. But I found that most of the people in Wyoming were great and when they find out what you want to do they're more than helpful. You know they'll invite you and show you the inside of the house feed you Browning's feed me. I. Ain't gaining profit from this. Take care of me. People are great around Wyoming. That's probably the best part of my job is that I do get to meet the people of Wyoming and see their unique houses and ranches. And while you're happy to show it I certainly appreciate your view coming all the way up from Cheyenne to our studios. And I know the people in Wyoming will be really curious to find out

more about architecture in the Cowboys. Thank you. Mainstreet Wyoming is made possible in part by grants from Kennicott energy. Proud to be a part of Wyoming's future in the uranium exploration mining and production industry. And by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities enriching

lives of Wyoming people through the study of Wyoming history values and ideas.