Friday, June 6, 2008

The Boise Pit

This is "the pit" in downtown Boise. It's right in the middle of downtown at 8th and Main Streets. It's a famous hole in the ground with at least two developers saying they were going to build the "tallest building in Idaho" here, with expensive condos and shops. Well, lawsuit after lawsuit, and another one closed yesterday - with a judge saying "no" to a bankrupt developer. So, the pit has been there for over 20 years. What used to stand in its place was the Eastman Building - which was the Overland Hotel (I think) before that. I remember the old building, it had a grand, sweeping staircase you could see through the cloudy, old front windows. When I saw it, it was vacant and crumbling, and when developers eyed tearing it down, there was a "suspicious" fire and it was gone. I wish it could just become a nice plaza, or small green space park.

4 comments:

  1. The pit is especially sad to me because I remember the beautiful old Eastman building. If anyone has pictures of it I would love to see. I recall it being long abandonded in the early 80's like much of downtown at that time, and there was a retail store on the ground floor that still had old products in glass cases. Someone had just up and walked away from the place sometime in the 70's and it became a time capsule before it burned down.

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  2. Hi Jack - I have seen photos of the exterior and interior. I think the Idaho State Historical Society has some posted online. The city development agency bought the building, and there is sat abandoned until it burned.

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  3. The pit has only been there since 2000, from what I remember. Before that, it was a vacant lot for a really long time, but certainly not a pit. I lived in Boise when they broke ground on it, and struggled through the drama and money loss. We called it "the World's Largest Ashtray."

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  4. I see you're interested in the Boise "pit". If you're also interested...I just posted a video on youtube last week with actual video of the fire that took down the last building to sit on the lot...the fire that took down the historic six-story, 82-year old Eastman building on Jan 24th, 1987. KBOI channel 2 put the video together for me. It's great historical footage. Enjoy!

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