Planned renovation to transform a historic building into a bar exposed two panoramic paintings hidden under the plaster, halting the work and leading the owners to investigate the origin of the images, the dimensions of the set, and its connection with an old cinema in the small town.
Nick Timm was involved in the renovation of a historic building purchased to house a bar and a community meeting point in Okanogan, Washington, when he decided to check what was behind the plaster-covered walls.
During the removal of the coating, a large painting, featuring a lake, cabins, and trees, emerged, which had remained hidden in the building constructed at the beginning of the 20th century and had gone unnoticed by the new occupants for decades.
Soon after, a team member suggested that the opposite wall might also hold another work, leading the group to open the structure on the other side and find a second mural corresponding to the first during the renovation.
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18-meter murals emerge behind the walls
With approximately 60 feet in length by 20 feet in height, equivalent to about 18 meters by 6 meters, each painting occupied an extensive area on the north and south walls of the old building.
Together, the two works totaled about 36 linear meters and transformed the interior of the building into a wide panoramic landscape, despite having remained covered by plaster for much of the building’s history.
According to the American broadcaster KCRA, which reported the discovery based on Nick Timm’s testimony and records provided by the family, the couple had purchased the building at the end of 2021 to convert it into a social space.
Paintings were almost covered again
The revelation occurred when the work was nearing a stage that would close the walls again, and Nick stated that there were about 20 minutes left for the team to cover that area before he interrupted the service.
As the material was removed, colors and shapes began to appear on a fabric surface attached to the wall, revealing a landscape scene composed of water, buildings, and vegetation distributed along almost the entire hall.
Although the team had started work around 5 a.m., the paintings were only found near 5 p.m., and the group remained on site for another four hours to carefully remove the remaining coating.
Instead of an isolated fragment or a small decoration, two panoramic screens installed on opposite sides of the building emerged, creating a continuous scene for those inside the space then used as an exhibition room.
1915 Record Clarifies the Origin of the Murals
With the participation of the Okanogan County Historical Society, the origin of the paintings began to be clarified after the discovery of a 1915 newspaper article about planned improvements for the old Hub Theatre.
The record mentioned the installation of 120 feet of light-toned panoramic landscape, a measurement compatible with the sum of the two murals found, and indicated that the paintings were part of the decoration created for the old cinema.
Built around 1907, the property had different uses over the decades and, as reported by Nick Timm, functioned as a cinema, billiard hall, and even a space for cockfights before undergoing successive internal interventions.
These changes altered the building’s original configuration and left the paintings behind new walls, while the building continued to be used for different activities without the panoramic set remaining visible to the public over time.
Couple Planned to Transform the Building into a Bar
Before the discovery, Nick and Lisa Timm planned to use the approximately 3,000 square feet of the property, about 279 square meters, to open a community-oriented bar and restore the building’s presence in the city center.
With experience in managing bars and restaurants in Olympia, Nick returned to Okanogan with his wife to care for his father, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer and died before the purchase of the building.
After the loss, a friend informed the couple that the building was available, creating the opportunity to restore the space and develop a new venture in an area linked to the commercial and cultural memory of the small town.
From the beginning, the project aimed to gather objects and historical references from Okanogan, but the discovery of the murals added to the property an original element directly related to the period when the building hosted performances and film screenings.
Discovery Alters the Restoration Project
Part of the paintings showed damage caused by water, a circumstance that required care before any permanent exhibition and led the owners to plan the removal of the screens, the restoration of the affected areas, and the reinstallation of the set.
This work also modified the renovation schedule, as the couple expected to open the bar at the end of March, while the restoration of the murals could delay the opening by a few months due to the need for specialized evaluation and additional resources.
To help fund the service, Nick and Lisa created a fundraising campaign with community support, as the size of the canvases, the existing damage, and the need to move them made the intervention more complex than the initial work.
Common work revealed part of local history
Shortly before the walls were closed again, a decision made during a common renovation allowed the identification of two paintings that spanned more than a century within a building subjected to different uses, adaptations, and architectural transformations.
In addition to preserving part of the visual experience offered to Hub Theatre patrons, the landscapes show how old cinemas used painted backdrops to decorate the hall and create their own atmosphere before the popularization of digital resources.
The documentation found by the historical society allowed the association of the measurements and theme of the murals with the advertisement published in 1915, while lake, cabins, and trees reappeared during the reorganization of the project planned for the new bar.
How many paintings, documents, and historical structures may still remain hidden behind the walls of renovated buildings used every day, just waiting for a common work to interrupt decades of silence and reveal again what time has covered?
