An important place: "It is the state's largest city outside the Boise metropolitan area.  As of the 2010 census, the population of Idaho Falls was 56,813 (2019 estimate: 62,888), with a metro population of 133,265.

"Idaho Falls serves as the commercial, cultural, and healthcare hub for Eastern Idaho, as well as parts of western Wyoming and southern Montana." Also the location of "the only fatal nuclear reactor incident in U.S. history."

I guess we’re going to get the OUMB out of the way.

"You know, we could get more space if we didn't indent the windows by at least a foot."

"More space, yes, but the windows would be flush."

"And? So?"

"We're a modern bank. The windows have to be screwed up somehow."

Interesting facade. No, really. The tile is a nice addition.

I can’t quite figure out the left side. Dimensions intermixing.

Google captures a moment in the theater's long history:

Previously:

Reflection, or real facade under glass, or a ghost?

Used to be the Broadway. The old facade here.

The bunker style of store had a certain cachet in the 60s and 70s, but eventually looked like some unfriendly bastion of indifference.

Everything encased. No windows. No connection to the sky or the weather. Climate-controlled and flourescently illuminated!

A classic sign. Downtowns once abounded with them. They glowed at night, of course.

I’d hate to return in 10 years and find it says ANTIQUES.

If it’s not a former movie theater, it certainly seems to want to give that impression.

 

Another one of those accumulation of inscrutable decisions. Why the second door? When and why was it bricked up? Why were the windows bricked?

Why does the second floor have nothing on the right side?

Fantastic!

And I like the way the architect said “to heck with symmetry” and put an extra pole over the door that led to upstairs.

As I like to say: we all know what this used to be, don’t we.

IOOF! FLT.

 

In case you needed a hint:

 

Opened as the Colonial, went through various names.


Nice restrained classical look. Despite what the Google cameras caught, it is not being liquified and pulled up into a dimensional rift.

Self-conscious OUMB. It seems to be drawing itself inward.

 

An ancient sign serving a new purpose, and doing so without particular enthusiasm.

The Papyrus typeface really doesn't go with googie.

The colors, the materials, the anachronistic light fixtures - it’s 1966, 1967 unchanged.

The most rote example of the classical-modern bank I can imagine. Yamasaki-inspired columns.

It’s actually quite nice.

What did I say about curved 30s / 40s modern buildings?

Right: WHITE. They must be white, as this one is.

Well, mostly.