W. A. Bernd Building
Sandpoint commenced as a Northern Pacific Railway town with a single-band sawmill until 1902, when Weyerhaeuser lumber interests took over and greatly enlarged that operation. A new townsite, which L. D. Farmin laid out in 1898 across Sand Creek from Sandpoint's original location, grew rapidly after 1902. Most of Sandpoint's brick commercial buildings were constructed there by 1910.
The $18,000 Bernd building was built during this construction boom, with the excavation begun in May, 1907. At least one other building in this area had encountered quicksand during construction. W. A. Bernd hoped to avoid this problem, and he hit upon a scheme of leaving the foundation of the building resting on hardpan and then constructing a basement well inside the foundation walls and independent of them. This gave him a thirty-by-sixty foot basement under the sixty-by-eighty foot building and saved many potential problems. Construction proceeded at a good pace over the summer months, and the two stories were ready to open by the end of the year. Frazier Brothers grocery and Quality House clothing occupied the north store while Francis D. Fowler's dry goods rented the south store. Sometime during the late 1920s the south store was changed into two smaller retail outlets. The office upstairs had been remodeled into hotel space by 1923 and continued as either hotel rooms or apartments until the late 1960s when the upstairs was vacated.
From the Idaho Historical Society