Idaho Falls Post Office Circa 1912

Idaho Falls has a truly classic Post Office that opened in 1916. It's The Best of The Best of that era and architectural genre. Naturally, we have always wondered where the Post Office was located before the new one was built in 1916.  Also we have wanted to know what that earlier Post Office looked like.  On June 24, 2022, we found a postcard on eBay that helped up answer those questions.  In this blog post, we will walk you through the process of documenting the earlier Post Office as well as pinning down a probable time frame for the postcard view itself.

This is the postcard we found.   Note that it uses the word "and" in the description.  So the card depicts TWO buildings.  That means the Post Office is at the right in this view. It was common for owners of a prominent building to hire postcard producers to showcase their building.  The photo was taken and the card produced by Wesley Andrews, a notable photographer whose work has helped document much of early Oregon and the Inland Northwest.  The card is postmarked in November 1914.  There was generally a one year time lag between taking a photo and getting a card distributed for sale. Likewise, postcards had a "shelf life."  That means they could sit on a display rack for a period of time often measured in years.  So, knowing the card was postmarked 1914 helped us get started.

Of course, the first thing we did was visit the Library of Congress to find the "nearest-in-time" Sanborn Fire Insurance Map.  In this case, we found a 1911 map of Idaho Falls.  On page 7 of the 20 page map we located the Post Office in correct proximity to a two story building with the correct entrance to match the building shown on the postcard.

Zooming in on the map, you can see the Post Office with Lobby separated by a small walkway from the two story building.  This pair of buildings was located on the Northeast corner of Park Avenue & A Street in Idaho Falls. Compare the Sanborn diagram to the postcard and you will note the entrances match.  The Post Office was single story and the larger building two story.

The next most important detail is the prominently featured automobile.  Back in the early 20th Century photographers didn't take chances on "hoping" a nice looking auto would somehow drive by for the photo.  Nope, they often posed an auto in the perfect location of a photo composition.  Since these early postcards were hand colored before printing, it's important to note the "featured" auto has a nice color while the other two are drab and featureless.  As chance would have it, the Studebaker dealership was located just behind the Salisbury-Earl Building!  Naturally, that suggests the featured auto was a Studebaker. So, we guessed it was a 1912 Studebaker, mostly based on the headlights and the top straps. Sure enough, the auto in the postcard is a very close match to a 1912 Studebaker.  Only one small detail doesn't match perfectly.  That can be explained away as a glitch in the hand-coloring process.

We've studied The Life & Times of Wesley Andrews and he was a meticulous, detail-oriented photographer. He worked really hard at creating balanced compositions with elements of human interest in them.  Hence, it makes sense to have two well-dress women and a baby carriage in the background of the automobile.  Perhaps they were on their way to the millinery ("milly") shop in the Salisbury-Earl Building.  In any event, it's a very nice, almost stately looking postcard.

Above is the Sanborn map clip showing the location of the Studebaker dealership.  If you look closely at the postcard you can almost make out a faint trace of the word "Bros" on the front of the building.

Here is the back of the postcard documenting its production by Wesley Andrews as well as the postmark date.  The source link on eBay at the time of "discovery" was:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/255579963506

Interestingly, it is almost certain the postcard was postmarked in the Post Office shown!