Overland Hotel, Corner of 8th and Main Streets with Banner "Democratic State Headquarters," 1906. The Overland Hotel was constructed here in 1905 by Toutellotte & Co.-- Hummel was added to the firms name in 1912-- and renamed the Eastman Building in 1927.
Donated by Barry Hopkins
Image Credits:
Left, Idaho State Historical Society: 73-163.18/Right, copyright Shawn Records
1999.
"Main Street along there was all merchants in there. I remember them all. The old Overland Hotel was up on the corner of 8th and Main. That was quite a place and one thing I might mention, in the Overland Hotel in the center of the lobby they had a round steel pillar, of course that was to help hold the second story up, and around it they had built a leather cushion, and I thought this was the most wonderful thing in the world. When I went down town, it wasn't very far, only a block and a half away, so I was there frequently. I used to go in this door, it opened right on the corner and I used to go and stand there and look at this leather seat because I was very sure that was where Governor Steunenberg sat. I thought that was where the State was being operated from, was this leather seat. I remember that distinctly."
-James H. Lawley, January 27, 1970
The richness of these images and their capacity to transport us to another time can lead us to a false nostalgia: an image of the past in black and white, that suggests that life was less complicated, quieter, more manageable. The intention here is to produce a more critical mode of seeing the relationship between past and present. A more critical mode of seeing and thinking must be created if the past is to aid us in the important decisions regarding the future. The historical images are juxtaposed with contemporary photographs by Shawn Records that attempt to recapture the vantage point of the original photographer . This pairing of images has precedent notably in the work of the Rephotographic Survey Project which reproduced 19th century images of the Western landscape in 1977-79. Collected in the book Second View, by Mark Klett, Ellen Manchester, et al., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984, those photographs set up a profound visual dynamic which is as much about the gap between the images as the narrative content of the photographs themselves.