Now you see it, now you don't

By CHANSE WATSON

Managing Editor

WALLACE — With the advancement of technology, there are more and more methods of teaching and learning being developed everyday.

In the small (but mighty in spirit) town of Wallace, a recent Wallace High School graduate and a local technology company are showing that these developments can happen anywhere.

Chuck Tatman and Gravis Tech owner Sera White recently went live with a new online history tool that can help satiate the curiosity of anyone who is interested in Wallace’s old buildings.

The website, dubbed “Tour the Missing Buildings of Wallace,” allows visitors to see a before and after view of certain parts of the city with just a click of the mouse or swipe of the finger.

“Welcome to the visual history of Wallace, ID,” the site says on its welcome page. “We have chosen to display some of the key buildings that are no longer with us. Use the sliders to see what these spaces looked like with their former occupants. We hope you enjoy seeing how things used to be!”

Though the site is still being developed, several before and after images are available for viewing including the Wallace Hospital, the Samuels Hotel, library park and more.

This project first got off the ground when Tatman decided to seek out an internship with Gravis Tech in December 2017/January 2018.

“I’m a big nerd, so I like computers and games and all these different things, and I knew that Gravis Tech at that point was still a little bit new in the Valley, so I didn’t know how far they reached,” he explained. “I went to their website and sent an email to Sera wondering ‘hey I’m really interested in these kind of things, but I don’t know a lot and I have very minor experience in coding websites — but that’s about it. Is there anything else you can teach me or show me?’”

Turns out, they certainly could and did. White responded to Tatman and offered him an internship, which he happily accepted.

Every week, White would work with Tatman and talk about a different computing topics including computer engineering and coding. After eight weeks of lessons, the two decided to use the skills he had been learning to work on a special project.

At first, the idea of what that project was going to be was a bit hazy, but a combination of ideas from both White and Tatman resulted in the missing buildings tour.

“This project has always been kind of a pet project of mine, but he and I together created the focus of it,” White said. “What I wanted was this concept of being able to take an existing space today … and be able to look at what it looked like back then.”

Building off this concept of White’s, Tatman, a Burke area resident, thought it would be neat to see all the missing buildings and homes that used to be in that area. The challenge with that though was finding the pictures of Burke to use. Since old photos of Wallace are more readily available, it was decided to design the missing buildings tour around it instead of Burke (for now).

With a clear vision in mind, Tatman got to work and began to hunt down old photos of buildings and landmarks that no longer exist in the historic town of Wallace. Once he found some, he then had to go to those locations and take new photos of what is (or rather isn’t) in that spot now — matching up the angles as best as he could.

Tatman said that this research part of the project was enjoyable, as he learned new things about his home.

“I’ve lived in the Valley nearly my whole life and I had never seen or heard of any of the floods that happened here. I missed out on a giant part of the history of Wallace with all these different buildings, so doing the research was definitively something that got me more ingrained into the project.”

After taking the before and after pictures and combining them with a bit of research, the website was born.

Tatman and White are both pleased with the current product and feel that it really serves a purpose.

“(It’s) meant to be informative and immersive, not just an attention grabber,” Tatman said.

“It’s not meant to be a product that’s going to make us rich or anything,” White added. “It’s just meant to be a cool virtual tour of the city that everybody can have accessible to them.”

Even though the site is now live and available for viewing, Tatman and White plan to build upon this idea to create an even more interactive history experience.

“My grand vision,” White explained, “is that you walk up and hold your phone up to the Lux Rooms (or other historical building in town) and you could see what it looked like historically superimposed over top.”

There are still a few steps along the way though before they can get to this ultimate goal.

White explained that the next phase “is to do a walking tour where either you walk up to a plaque and theres a QR code, and you hover your phone over it and it pops up that exact page of the website.”

It appears that in addition to simply wanting to finish what he started, Tatman has some financial incentive to develop the project further. On June 22, it was announced that the Morbeck Foundation was awarding $1,000 to Tatman so that he can continue to work on the idea throughout the summer.

Tatman plans to attend the University of Idaho in the fall to pursue a degree in engineering.

To check out the Missing Buildings of Wallace tour, visit tourwallace.gravistech.com.