Happy Centenary! Things or rather places, that are 100 years old.

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.

Kistler Tent & Awning Company

Painted building sign at original location of Kistler Tent and Awning.  At this point the company occupied a couple of buildings in the heart of downtown Casper.

Another Casper feature hitting the century mark this past year is Kistler Tent & Awning.

 Kistler Tent & Awning log on an elevator pad.  Up until very recently their logo featured a sheep wagon.

Kistler Tent & Awning is a canvas manufacturing company.  It makes, and still makes, all the things listed in this sign, as well as anything else that can be made with canvas.  Two of my pickups have tonneau covers made by Kistler Tent & Awning.

Kistler logo in the cement of a building most recently occupied by the Western Book Store.  Obviously this was the storefront for Kistler Tent and Awning at one time. An interesting thing is that the photos on the bricks depicted above are not on the same building, but an adjoining one.  Either Kistler leased the sign space or, probably more likely, it occupied several adjoining buildings at this time.

At some point in its early history Kistler Tent & Awning occupied a location, or locations, right downtown, showing what a major business it was.  When it located there I'm not certain of, however.  It's earliest noted location was on 7th and Durbin, a few blocks away.  The structures located there do not date to this period now.   The company is presently located about one mile to the west in more spacious quarters.

 Kistler Tent & Awning today.  I'm not sure when the company moved to this location, but if the sign is any indication it would likely have been in the 1940s or 1950s.

Wyoming Automotive

 Wyoming Automotive.  This building is obviously not the original structure.

If Kislter Tent & Awning made at least one product that was focused on an older means of transportation, covers for sheep wagons, the arrival of the automobile age was signaled by the arrival of another company in town, Wyoming Automotive.

When exactly in 1917 Wyoming Automotive opened up seems lost to history, but it was in 1917.  The company was one of the very first automobile supply stores in Casper and its amazingly still open today.

 July 26, 1922 edition of the Casper Daily Tribune.  An advertisement for Wyoming Automotive as a "jobber" of Eveready Flashlights is included.  I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.  Note also the odd advertisement for "Driverless Cars".  We may expect to see advertisements like that soon in  the paper, but what did it mean in 1922?

Wyoming Automotive isn't the only local automotive supply store still open, but in the age of the chain stores, that it keeps on keeping on is pretty amazing.  I wish I could say more about it, but unfortunately I really can't.  It has a focus to a degree on performance automobiles, and I've never owned one, so I've rarely stopped in the shop.  I'm glad they're still up and running, however.

Changing times and changing ownership.

One thing that perhaps we should note about all of these entities is that even though they're all still there, not one of them remains owned by the original owners, I think (I'm not completely certain about Kistler Tent & Awning).  Wyoming Automotive was purchased years and years ago by one of the individuals who worked at the store and its since gone on to another.  So it hasn't passed down in the family, per se, but sort has passed down through its employee family, which is neat.

While I'm uncertain, I think that Kistler Tent & Awning also went, at some point, from the Kistlers to an employee and is now passing through that family.   Again, I'm much less certain about the story there so I could be off, and in fact it might still be owned by the same family.  It's still locally owned any way you look at it.

The Consolidated Royalty Oil Company no longer occupies the entire fifth floor of the ConRoy Building which is named after it, and hasn't for many, many years.  So many, I don't know how many it is.  It actually came into formal existence in September 1917, just in time to occupy the building it had created, but how long it occupied space in the structure I'm unaware of.  It might have been a really long time, or it might not of.  No idea.

At any rate, the building always had tenants and other occupants and to a degree that was always the most significant aspect of its day to day existence.  Early on the Casper Star Tribune published from its basement as one of the tenants and, when it moved, Prairie Publishing (which is no longer around, but which I think would also be 100 this year but which only made it into the 1980s, I think) occupied that space.  Accounting firms and law firms had a presence in the building right from the very onset.  The descendants of two such entities that stretch back to the very early history of the building are still in it and other tenants have a presence that dates back up to fifty or more years.  Today the building is owned by some of its tenants, which shows an interesting degree of stability in the occupancy of the building.

Indeed, all three of these entities have shown that stability.  While they may no longer be owned by the original owners, they are all owned by people or business that had direct roles in the businesses and knew them well.  They all remain major local businesses a century down the road.  We can't say that about too many local enterprises.