Wallace Day #2: A Walking Tour

There is almost too much to take in, while strolling the streets of this darling Idaho town. We began the month of October with the Fall for History theme of Skeletons in the Closet. While I'm not certain there were many skeletons, there sure was a lot of history... and amazing architecture.

Our day began at the Elks Lodge. Designed by Spokane architect Charles I. Carpenter, in 1924, this was the Wallace second location for this fraternal order.
And yes, there many have been a skeleton or two. In 1991, 150 gun-toting federal agents smashed doors and confiscated 200 video-poker machines from bars across Shoshone County.
The Elks Lodge was one of 50 establishments the FBI originally swarmed, in search of gambling devices. Agents took four World War II-vintage slot machines that had been padlocked in the lodge’s basement. Two years later, the government returned the Elks’ machines after attorney John Magnuson argued they qualified as antiques. The government kept the $119.80 that was inside.
The Ladies' restroom had a lounge that was very groovy and quite comfortable if, one wanted to rest in a restroom.

The Men's room possessed the strangest, and a tad uncomfortable, urinal ever.
A little about this Benevolent and Protective Order. The Elks began in 1868 as a social club for minstrel show performers, called the "Jolly Corks".  It was established as a private club to elude New York City laws governing the opening hours of public taverns. Belief in a Supreme Being became a prerequisite for membership in 1892. The word "God" was substituted for Supreme Being in 1946. Interesting.
City Hall was built in 1924, replacing an earlier frame building. The two-story building houses the city offices along with the (currently volunteer) fire station.



This multi-story tower is the drying rack for firehoses. Jim, our guide, explained the complexity of it all, and danger. Who knew that a fire station was so precarious!

Jim tried to explain this complicated system. The Gamewell Fire Alarm Telegraph Company was formed in 1879.
The fire alarm telegraph system is a series of fire alarm boxes located on street corners, telephone poles, and commercial buildings. These boxes are connected via low voltage wiring located either on telephone poles or underground and connected to decoding devices in the Fire Station.
Each box is assigned a specific number and when a box is pulled or activated, a “code wheel” containing “teeth” will spin, causing the normally closed circuit to open for a momentary pulse. These pulses correspond to the box number, alerting the fire department of the activated box alarm. The box # is transmitted four times, known as rounds, to assure it is received properly at the fire station. Very, very complicated!

The former Lux Hotel, now the Sixth Street Melodrama and Theater (moved from 212 Sixth Street, ca. 1890–1905), historically housed a paint shop on the first floor and a brothel on the second floor and is the only remaining frame commercial building in the downtown core.


Upstairs, the girls' rooms have become costume and prop storage for the theater.


Next was a stop at this beautiful train depot. The Northern Pacific Depot was constructed in 1901 with unique bricks from the Olympian Hotel, the original terminus of the transcontinental NPRR in Tacoma. In 1986, due to the construction of I-90, the building was moved approximately 200 feet across the Coeur d’Alene River to its current location (more about that below).



The last stop, and one I had already been to when in Wallace in June, was at the Oasis Bordello Museum building which housed an active bordello until the previously mentioned FBI raid occurred.
The occupants hastily left town leaving personal items, furnishings, food in the cupboards, and even the groceries still sit in a grocery bag on the kitchen counter. 
A local business man bought the building in 1993, from the now out of business madam. It has remained as they left it and was opened as a museum. The guided tour explains the rushed departure through information gathered from former maids, clients and even the girls themselves. Needless-to-say, I sat this part of the tour out. Once was enough. It's incredibly interesting, yet incredibly sad, too.
A little background to understand the architecture. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Wallace transformed from a frontier mining town to a settled, commerce-based community. Local businessmen were at first rewarded for their entrepreneurial risk-taking as they established the first stores of the new town.
Then, like other small towns throughout America, mass production and improved transportation allowed national firms to manufacture and deliver goods to Wallace more cheaply than local businesses could produce them. Following an 1890 fire, which leveled the town’s crude, wood-framed buildings, a new business center emerged, with merchants rebuilding Wallace’s commercial core with structures of brick, stone, and sheet metal, and decorative elements such as cast-iron ornamentation and turrets covered in pressed tin. Paved streets and electricity were also introduced at the time.
Wallace was the economic center for the region and in 1898 became the political center as well, when it was made the county seat. The substantial bank buildings, mercantile houses, hotels, and courthouse built at the time all attest to the prominent role Wallace played in the development of Shoshone County.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Wallace had become the financial driver of the Inland Empire, but its isolation and confinement in the Coeur d’Alene Valley limited its expansion. Instead, Spokane grew dramatically, propelled by the silver mines of Idaho.

Development of the commercial district continued into well into the 1930s. Many of the buildings were designed by prominent Spokane architects. Between 1890 and 1933, they introduced a variety of popular styles including Queen Anne, Classical Revival, and Art Deco to the downtown Wallace’s streetscape. Spokane’s concentration of talented architects was due to a substantial core of wealthy clientele, whose fortunes were directly tied to the flow of resources from the Coeur d’Alene mining district.

Many of the original 1890 brick buildings in the central business district escaped the huge 1910 forest fire that swept northern Idaho. A significant inventory of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century commercial architecture remains intact to this day, surviving as one of the most authentic mining-era streetscapes in the Rocky Mountain region. Which, as previously mentioned, might not have been the case.
In 1976, traffic on I-90, the longest interstate highway in the United States at 3,024 miles, traveled through downtown Wallace, where it had to stop at the only stoplight on the whole transcontinental route. Highway engineers proposed destroying much of the historic downtown to complete the highway. Harry Magnuson, a local lawyer and developer, spearheaded the community’s efforts to rescue Wallace’s historic downtown by successfully pursuing its placement as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. Engineers altered their plans and constructed I-90 as an elevated bypass, sparing Wallace’s commercial heart from certain and catastrophic demolition. I can't even imagine what would have been. Yikes.
Interesting oddities abound in Wallace.

Wallace's history is found in some unique places. Considered "mass transit 19th Century style" are the Wallace Stairs. They are a series of recently restored stairs, most 100 ft. long and more, some with landings and decks. Since the town’s origins in the 1880s, people needed to climb from the main street level up to homes in the steep south hills. Today climbers are treated to breathtaking views of mountain, river and townscape, fresh air and a fantastic cardio workout.
The rest of our day was spent strolling the neighborhoods, delighting in the 'local' side of life here.




Sometimes looking down is just as rewarding as upward gazing. I loved this. Edwin Ford builds the first Ford Meter Box in his basement workshop (1898). Word of Ford’s meter box design spreads to neighboring towns by word-of-mouth. On December 20, 1911, he files a patent and the Ford Meter Box Company is born. I have never seen one of these and was intrigued.
We visited this shop while on the Safe tour. I had been looking for a simple silver band to replace my original wedding ring (stolen many years ago). Jim (the volunteer fireman who gave us a tour earlier in the day) owns this shop and I had vowed to return.
What a perfect souvenir from a town build on mining!
Who knows what we'll discover tomorrow on our final Fall for History day.
“Fall has always been my favorite season.
The time when everything bursts with its last beauty,
as if nature had been saving up all year
for the grand finale.”
-Lauren DeStefano

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1 comments:

Four Points Bulletin said...

Wallace looks like a great stop. I love towns where the historic buildings are a main attaction. Towns that are stuck in time. Fun explore!

October 8, 2022 at 10:14 AM

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