Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
VOLLMER GREAT BARGAIN STORE (1883-1884)
415 Main Street
Lewiston ID 83501
c. 1887 (Nez Perce County Historical Society)
A two-story brick commercial building designed in the Renaissance Revival style, the
Vollmer Block was erected as a general merchandise store with offices on the second
floor by John P. Vollmer, Lewiston’s (and Idaho’s) first millionaire. The building first
housed the J.P. Vollmer Great Bargain Store. The First National Bank of Lewiston, north
Idaho’s first chartered financial institution,
originally occupied the west storefront. At a
point between 1900 and 1904, it moved to
the east corner of the building and remained
at that location until 1946, when it was sold
to First Security Bank of Idaho, which continued its financial operations at the site until
1989 − a span of 105 years during which the
building served as the location of a bank.
Sanborn Map, March 1888
In March 1991 First Security Bank donated
the building to the Lewis-Clark State College
Foundation for use as the Center for Arts and History. Since opening in October, 1991
the Center has welcomed more than 75,000 visitors from all fifty states and 38 foreign
countries. On March 5, 2009, the Center for Arts & History experienced a fire that closed
the Main Street location for over a year.
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
The building retains its
original second story
segmental arched
windows, and early first
story windows, terra
cotta entrances and
storefront arrangement. The trompe l’oeil
mural on the “D” Street
side was painted in
1998 by Colleen
Esparsen to appear as
if the viewer could see
Lewis-Clark State College
inside the building and
Center for Arts & History
view the collections within.
While several sources state that the architect was Kirtland Cutter,
records show that Cutter did not arrive in the Spokane, Washington,
until 1886 and did not design any structures in the region until 1887.
Newspaper accounts verify that the construction of Vollmer Building
was completed during the winter of 1883-1884.
John P. Vollmer, c. 1875
(Vollmer Archives)
c. 1898 Nez Perce County Historical Society
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
c. 1904
Nez Perce County Historical Society
c. 1888 Nez Perce County Historical Society
Listings: National Registry of Historic Places
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
THOMPSON-MIRANDA CABIN (c. 1865)
Currently in Pioneer Park, but scheduled for relocation in 2012
This historic log cabin is Lewiston’s oldest surviving
residence and once sat on 19th Street between
Main and G Streets. The first documented owner
was Samuel C. Thompson (1820-1898), who came
to Lewiston in 1862 and became one “of the chief
wealth holders of the county,” eventually owning
nearly all of Lewiston between 14th to 21st Streets.
In 1867 Thompson purchased the building from a
Nez Perce tribal member who purportedly learned
to build notched structures from Henry Spalding.
In February 1879, William B. Akins (1827-1884)
rented the cabin with his wife and their sons, John
and Sage, and soon began buying up property in
the area. John (1866-1940) became a steamboat
captain and commanded the Lewiston, while Sage
(1868-1942) served on the City Council for 14
years.
An Italian-born gardener and local resident since
1886, Salvadore Miranda (1859-1941) and his
wife Mary purchased the property from
Thompson’s widow in 1898, added surrounding
lots in 1901 and 1904, and erected a new house
on 2½ acres, where his truck farm would produce
the region’s first crops of celery. Lewiston
businesswoman Louisa Aquino Murphy (18901978) lived with the family as an immigrant
teenager and saved three-year-old Dominic
Miranda from the fire that destroyed the new
home in January 1910.
Lewiston Tribune
After the Spalding mission centennial in 1936,
Lewiston’s central municipal greenspace was
Lewiston Morning Tribune, May 3, 1936
renamed Pioneer Park, and the cabin was moved
there in June 1937, largely through the efforts of the Pioneer Society of North Idaho. In
2010 funding was awarded to conduct a major preservation intervention, which will
include moving the cabin to a new site.
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
Samuel C. Thompson (1820-1898)
(Idaho State Historical Society)
Salvadore Miranda (1859-1941) and family
(Miranda Family Archives)
Lewiston Tribune
Listings: none
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
ROBERT GROSTEIN RESIDENCE (before 1882)
Original location: 608 Main Street
Moved to 141 9th Street in 1912
b. 1886 (Nez Perce County Historical Society
Born in Poland in 1835, Robert
Grostein grew up in Buffalo, New
York, where he worked in his father’s
store. He made his way to California
in 1854 to mine gold, arriving with
$1.00 in his pocket. By 1856 he had
saved enough money to open a store
in The Dalles, Oregon. In 1861
Grostein became the first documented
Jewish resident of the Idaho Territory.
He married Rachel Newman of
Sacramento, California, in 1864. Over
the course of his business career, he
built several public buildings and "one
of the finest residences" in the city,
c. 1910
Vassar-Rawls Funeral Home
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
owned 3,500 acres of farmland, and operated strings of pack mules to supply mining
camps. All of the old Lombard poplars
that once filled downtown Lewiston are
said to have descended from a twig he
had used to urge on the reluctant mule
that carried him to Lewiston. He died in
1907.
Construction of the Grostein home has
been variably dated from the 1870s to
early 1880s. In 1907 the firm of J. O.
and C. J. Vassar, Idaho’s first exclusive
mortuary, moved into the house and
remodeled it as a funeral home. The
building was cut in half and moved on
horse-drawn rollers to 9th and Idaho
Streets on July 25, 1912.
S. D. Branting
Vassar-Rawls Funeral Home relocated in 1975. Vincent V. Vassar, president of the
company at the time, hoped the structure would not be torn down, as had many of the
mansions built by Lewiston’s early entrepreneurs, including the home of Idaho’s first
millionaire, John P. Vollmer. Since 1976 the building has been used by various
businesses.
Listings: none
Lewiston Morning Tribune, July 1912, showing the building sawn in half
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY, EPISCOPAL (1888-1890)
Original location: 202 11th Street
Moved to 731 8th Street in 1919
c. 1893 (Nez Perce County Historical Society)
S. D. Branting
On Christmas Day, 1864,
local Episcopalians meet for
their first services,
presumably under the
direction of Rev. J. Michael
Fackler, who was the director
of the Missionary District of
Idaho who had only recently
founded a church in Boise.
As a consequence, the
church was named the
Church of the Nativity. Until
1881, it was served by
itinerant ministers. Rev.
Lemuel Wells, Rector of St.
Paul’s in Walla Walla, began
making regular visits to
Lewiston to conduct services in 1874. In July 1881, John D. McConkey arrived and
would serve the community many years. He set himself to the task over the next decade
to acquiring property and building a church, construction of which extended from 1888 –
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
1890 on 11th Street, in an area
known popularly as “Piety Corner,”
so-called as it was also the location
of the Methodist and Presbyterian
Churches. The Church of the Nativity
first appears on the Sanborn map of
January 1891. The congregation had
met at the Masonic Lodge, the
Universalist Church and the Red
Cross Hall.
In 1919 the building, replete with
the Vollmer and Kester memorial
south face and columbarium
windows, was moved by horses and
steam wenches to an area of Normal Hill where several churches had been erected. The
church added a columbarium in the 1990s.
Listings: none
Evangeline Vollmer memorial altar
window, east face of the nave
(Steven Branting)
Evangeline, eldest daughter of
John and Sarah Vollmer, died on
September 27, 1881. Her funeral
was the first conducted and
recorded by Rev. John McConkey
(below).
S. D. Branting
City of Portland, Oregon, Archives
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
CHARLES C. BUNNELL RESIDENCE (1879)
227 Snake River Avenue (originally 57 South E Street, then 57 Snake River Avenue)
S. D. Branting
Born in 1835 in Rochester, New York, Bunnell (right)
came to Lewiston in 1862 after operating a tinware
and stove store in Portland, Oregon, and established
the city’s first hardware store. In 1872 his assets
were listed as $5,000 ($90,000 today), making him
one of the wealthiest men in Nez Perce County at
the time. On September 22, 1872, he married Flora
A. Springer. Parents to one son, Walter, the couple
adopted the two daughters of Mrs. Bunnell’s
widowed sister, Johanna Springer. He was a charter
member and master of Idaho’s first short-lived
Masonic Lodge (1862-1865) and served as the
treasurer of its successor after its reorganization in
December 1874. In 1885 Bunnell and his brother
Dennis erected “one of the neatest and best
arranged stores found this side of Portland.”
(Lewiston Teller). He became a director of the
Lewiston National Bank in 1888 and served as
president of the institution for three years.
City of Portland, Oregon, Archives
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
Bunnell was deeded the property for the home on December 11, 1875, as a result of the
official survey of Lewiston. Based on the decision in Scully v Squier [215 U.S. 144
(1909)], Bunnell may well have owned the property for some years prior to the
allocation of parcels by government trustee and Lewiston’s mayor Dr. Henry W.
Stainton. The street near which he built the house provided access to Lewiston principal
residential district at the time and the city’s primary wharfs. Idaho’s first millionaire,
John P. Vollmer, lived a few lots to the south. Anecdotal evidence points to a
construction date in 1879, at which time the street was known as “E.” However, in
February 1878, the Lewiston City Council acted on a petition signed by numerous
homeowners and approved the widening and grading of the street to confirm to the
survey of the city. Bunnell was named to the committee to supervise the work. Bunnell
took the oath as a member of the council on July 2, 1878. The street was renamed
“Snake River Avenue” in January 1900, shortly before the Bunnells moved to a new
home in a residential area of town being developed on Normal Hill.
The January 10, 1943, edition of the Lewiston Morning Tribune printed the recollections
of Grace née Kettenbach Pfafflin (seen on the right in 1881), who lived next door and
attended a party given in the Bunnell home in the autumn of 1884. In part she wrote:
Kettenbach Archives
“On one side of the large entrance hall was a sittingroom, which opened into a good sized dining room.
On the other side of the hall was the parlour. The
floors of the entire house were covered with Brussels
carpets, the one in the parlour blossoming with
cabbage-roses. The windows of the parlour were
hung with Nottingham-lace curtains, and the walls
were covered with gold framed paintings. The room
was illuminated by coal oil hanging lamps suspended
from the ceiling; their bowls, made of transparent
white china, were decorated with painted sprays of
flowers, and their shades sported fringes of glass
icicle prisms which sparkled in the light. The bay
windows were filled with pyramid-shaped flower
stands, their zinc-lined shelves filled with blooming
house-plants ranging from rose geraniums, fuchsias,
roses, calla lilies, cacti, to the rare night-blooming
cereus. The room was furnished with a set of walnut
furniture upholstered in red brocaded plush. Little
marble-topped tables holding marble busts and
statuettes cluttered up the floor, furnishing hazards
for the unwary. An occasional table held photograph
and autograph albums… Scattered about the floor of
the parlour were elegant spittoons of fine china, with painted decorations of
pansies and wild-roses… The parlour, as well as the entire house, was heated by
large cast-iron stoves trimmed with nickel-plated ornaments at the top, varying
in design from a knight in armor to a horse or mountain goat.”
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
On December 25, 1884, the “very elegantly furnished” home was the scene of a double
wedding of the Bunnell’s adopted daughters, Minnie and Annie Springer. The Ladies Aid
Society of the Presbyterian Church, which the Bunnells attended, held frequent lawn
socials at the home. Wesley Graves, Mrs. Bunnell’s father, died in the house on April 6,
1889. His funeral and burial may have been conducted from the home, given Lewiston
lack of a mortuary and the prevailing custom of the era.
Snake River Avenue, looking north, c. 1918 (Vaden Floch Collection)
He sold the store and retired from his business
pursuits in 1899. In August 1907, Bunnell
advertised the building as a “large 10 room
residence… suitable for boarding or boarding and
lodging house.” The Lewiston Morning Tribune
(April 7, 1908) related that “Prof. Winkler, the
masseur, has leased the Bunnell Building, 227
Snake River Ave., where he will open a sanitarium
and private hospital” under the name “Lewiston
School of Massage.”
house footprint, Sanborn Map
Company, November 1904
Bunnell died on April 17, 1908, after a long
illness. In 1917, Flora filed for a veteran’s
pension, based on Charles’ service in the Nez
Perce War (1877). She died on June 25, 1924.
By 1915 the home was being used solely as a boarding house. In 1944 the house served
as the United States Weather Bureau office. Noah Irwin purchased the home in 1946,
restoring it and installing a fireplace from the Hotel de France, which was an important
Lewiston landmark from the 1860s until it was razed in 1945. After several years as an
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Lewiston: Extant Territorial Period Buildings
(1863 – 1890)
Ex scrinio S. D. Branting
apartment building frequently visited by Lewiston police officers, the building housed the
offices of a local real estate agency during much of the 1980s.
c. 1888 (Roswell H. and Annie R. Gardiner, photographers)
One postscript deserves mention. Bunnell became embroiled in a minor scandal in
November 1878. Applications for Snake River frontage lots were received by the
Lewiston City Council and approved for Bunnell, Dan Favor, M. M. Williams, Vollmer,
Edmund Pearcy and Wesley Mulkey. The bids were accepted, and the deeds were
executed upon payment. However, there was one small problem − Bunnell, Williams
and Vollmer were members of the council and had used their office to issue deeds to
themselves, a clear conflict of interest. On May 6, 1879, a new council ordered an
investigation into the matter and voided the sales. Bunnell never again ran for office.
Since 1992 the house has been owned by a private party and is not open to the public.
Listings: none
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