I found this photo on The Old Motor a couple weeks ago. Danville is the County Seat of our Hendricks County Indiana, the first county west of Indianapolis proper. Hence, I sent it to our local "home-town" weekly county newspaper, The Hendricks County Republican. (Self-appointed forum Politics Police: As I've said previously, that newspaper has been published continuously since 1847, about a decade before the current United States Republican Party was formed, so calm down...the periodical is not affiliated with any political party.)The editor ran the following item in the April 4 edition. I thought I knew where and what the building was, but wasn't certain enough to venture a guess and risk being wrong. As it turned out, I had correctly identified the building. It is extant, although in poor shape.
Indeed, it was a Studebaker dealership briefly after World War II, maybe six or seven years, according to local SDCers, friends Howe K. Clark Jr. and Dave Elmore. I wasn't living in Indiana at the time, but they are pretty sure it was belly-up before 1955. Click to enlarge:
The [probably] new car in the photo on the right is for sure a 1939 Pontiac DeLuxe Eight convertible.
After the building was positively identified, I sent the editor a second photo I had taken maybe eight years ago, since the building had been a Studebaker dealership at one time. This photo appeared in this week's edition; April 11, 2019. Again, click to enlarge:
Note that the building is the east side of a sloping street, facing west. For that reason, there is obviously no access to the showroom from the street. Rather, the only access is through a large overhead door in the rear, off an alley, where the topography is more or less level and the garage floor is at grade.
The person taking the original Mystery Photo would have been standing in that open garage doorway in the back of the building at the alley, looking west into the building from the "shop" entrance. The bright opening at the far end of the photo would have been the wide entryway to the showroom; cars going into the showroom would have been driven the length of the shop floor to get there.
Perhaps the photo was taken late in the day, when the sunshine in the showroom would have been bright and would thus account for the "white-out" look at the far end of the photo.
BP
We've got to quit saying, 
Hmmmm....The first photo should be a larger version of the 1938-1939 photo, as I copied it from 
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