By 1890, Butte boasted 10,723 inhabitants, more than eighty operating mines, and an extensive electric streetcar (trolley) system. As demand for copper soared and the population tripled over the next decade, multifamily residences and apartment buildings filled most vacant lots, especially in the west- and south-lying neighborhoods. Jesse Wathey, superintendent of the Butte Consolidated Street Railway, commissioned this classic brick duplex in 1890. Colored multipaned windows in the living room, a second-story porch, and a decorative parapet (roofline) added charm to the middle-class, two-bedroom units. Jesse and his family lived in a small house nearby on an adjoining lot facing Porphyry Street. They rented the apartments to an ever-changing array of skilled mine workers and young professionals. Jewish immigrants Simon and Rachael Witofsky purchased the building by 1913. Simon operated the Butte Trunk Manufacturing Company, and Rachael raised their children and managed tenants. When the couple divorced in 1916, Rachael gained full ownership and continued living in No. 326, renting out rooms until 1922. Her son Mendal and family lived next door in No. 328 from 1923 to 1931.
]]>Anaconda’s population jumped from approximately 4,000 in 1890 to 7,800 in 1895. As a result, both residential and commercial construction boomed between 1893 and 1898. Hundreds of carpenters, masons, and laborers built 1,376 dwellings between 1895 and 1904. By 1896, this lot held a three-room, hipped-roof cottage facing the street, another small cottage behind it, and a stable bordering the alley. By 1903, the owner had expanded both cottages and remodeled the stable into a two-story home. Between 1900 and 1928, an ever-changing array of laborers, smelter, and railroad workers occupied the homes. Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific Railroad carpenter Walter Peters purchased the property in 1928. He likely removed the backyard houses, added a garage, and remodeled the front of the main house, which he covered with a distinctive “catslide” gable roof. Often found on English Tudor Revival style homes of the 1920s and 1930s, the roof extends lower on one side, almost to the ground, allowing a cat to “slide” off the roof. Walter and his wife Josephine raised two sons here and remained in residence until the late 1940s.
]]>The Reverend Benjamin F. Shuart founded the First Congregational Church in May 1882, only two months after Northern Pacific Railroad investors established Billings. Since then, the church has served as a place of worship and a stalwart advocate for civil rights, human dignity, and social justice. In November 1883, carpenters replaced a temporary church building with a permanent, Tudor-Revival style brick building. During construction, Shuart raised funds to build the city’s first public school and organized the Billings Literary Society (a precursor to the Billings Public Library). In the early 1900s, the church promoted women’s suffrage efforts and provided food, clothing, and medical aid to Billings residents. In 1918, the church became an emergency hospital during the influenza pandemic. To accommodate growing membership, church leaders commissioned a north-side Parish House wing in 1928, adding classrooms and assembly spaces. An education wing followed in 1951, and the current Modern style addition replaced the 1883 church and part of the 1928 addition in 1957. Church efforts during the Great Depression addressed poverty, and after World War II, refugee resettlement. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the congregation created affordable housing, opened a childcare center, and offered food programs for the elderly and disabled. Fighting racism and hate speech in 1993, the congregation encouraged Billings residents to display paper menorahs in their windows to support the Jewish community and all victims of hate crimes. Thousands participated, attracting worldwide attention and inspiring the national “Not in Our Town” movement. First Congregational Church remains the oldest operating congregational church in Montana.
]]>Access to three transcontinental railroads and a booming rural population led Omaha, Nebraska-based Western Newspaper Union (WNU) to build this reinforced concrete and brick warehouse in 1917. Local architect Curtis Oehme designed the Western Commercial style building, which features multicolored brick, recessed brick panels, and diamond-shaped inlays on the vertical pilasters. In the late 1890s, Western Newspaper Union revolutionized rural journalism by supplying "ready-print" to small local newspapers with limited equipment and workers. Ready-print plates were premade newspaper printing plates containing national and international news, fiction, photographs, and advertisements. Rural weekly newspapers subscribed to the service, which allowed them to offer a wider variety of inside page content. In the 1920s, WNU supplied plates to about seventy-five papers in Montana and Wyoming. In 1922, WNU added an east-side addition and merged their paper stocks with the Carpenter Paper Company. Six Carpenter brothers had started the business in 1887 in a remodeled livery stable in Des Moines, Iowa. By 1900, they grew it into one of the nation’s largest paper suppliers. The company moved to Omaha in 1907 and expanded to Billings in 1917. By 1929, Carpenter had added many new salesmen and warehouse workers and branched into flooring products and Victrola record players. That year, the company purchased the building from WNU, which remained a tenant until 1940. In 1951, Carpenter added a thirty-five-thousand square-foot warehouse addition designed by Cushing & Terrell. The Carpenter Paper Company continued to provide wholesale paper products to eastern Montana and northern Wyoming until 1996.
]]>Dentist Alphaeus V. Fluhrer and wife Margaret had this Queen Anne/Colonial Revival style home built in 1908. Originally, the home featured a modest rectangular floorplan with a gable-front roof and full front porch. Between 1912 and 1922, the Fluhrers added two rear additions, a concrete garage, and a shed. After 1928, new owners constructed additions to the south side. The Fluhrers raised three children in the home, and Alphaeus participated in nearly every fraternal organization in town. Harry and Esther Olcott purchased the home in 1928. Soon after, they planted tiny spruce trees that (as of 2026) hide the home from Word Avenue. Harry owned a wholesale grocery warehouse and a farm implement dealership. He served for many years as president of the Red Lodge Rodeo Association, president of the Commercial Club, and was elected mayor of Red Lodge in 1945. Esther—who had graduated as valedictorian from Carbon County High School—stayed home to raise two daughters, a son, and an adopted niece. All three Olcott children graduated as valedictorians and completed college.
]]>Great Falls’ school district trustees commissioned architects William Donvan and Burt Rhoads to build this Neoclassical Revival style school building in 1910. The new school replaced a smaller 1891 school building three blocks to the east. It boasted eight classrooms on two floors, a central hallway lit by a large fanlight window, central heat, and a full basement. The school mainly served recent European immigrants, many of whom learned to speak English in the school’s classrooms. Throughout the 1910s, the city’s school-aged population grew rapidly, and the school district kept pace with additions and expansions throughout the city. In early 1916, school trustees hired architect George Maurey to design a three-story southern annex. The rusticated stone and buff brick addition faced Second Avenue Southwest and held ten new classrooms and two playrooms. The school’s population continued to grow throughout the 1920s and by 1929, the school added two classrooms in the basement for children of the city’s “landless” Métis and Chippewa Cree Indians. These segregated rooms reportedly offered Indian students instruction in crafts and trades in addition to the regular curriculum. In 1938-39, the school district used federal funds from the Public Works Administration to add east and west wings to the 1916 annex, but Indian children remained segregated. Public outcry protesting unfair treatment eventually succeeded in ending Indian segregation in the schools by 1950. The school closed in 1985 and was converted to apartments in 1989.
]]>About a third of the entire population of Norway left the country during the heyday of emigration between 1860 and 1910. Among those emigrating were the Bratsberg and Grant families, both of whom left the fjord city of Trondheim for Chicago in 1872. In 1874, both families moved to Sherman, South Dakota, to farm. In 1891, Ellen Bratsberg and Laurits Grant married and began farming themselves. The couple moved to Kalispell in 1908. Laurits invested in property and oil leases. Ellen—who lost six children in infancy—was active in the Bethlehem Lutheran Church. Into her eighties she continued to practice the handicrafts she had learned as a child: spinning, weaving, knitting, rug-making, and Hardanger embroidery (Norwegian white on white needlework). Ellen and Laurits built this elegant Craftsman style home in 1924. Distinguishing features include decorative brackets beneath wide overhanging eaves and the open front porch supported by battered (tapered) columns. Circa 1934, Modern Shoe Shop proprietor Olai Foss and his wife Olive purchased the home. When the couple moved away in 1937, they sold Olai’s shop and the house to Albert and Margaret Sos.
]]>By the time workers built this hipped roof cottage circa 1888, a hodgepodge of log cabins and wood-frame miners' cottages dotted the hill above the still developing Original and Colorado mineyards. During the next twenty years the area exploded with industrial and residential development. By 1891, miners filled the new brick boardinghouse across the street. Starting in 1892, steam engines pulling heavily loaded rail cars roared by at all hours on the bank just north of the house. By 1902, the view from the front porch included the towering steel Original Mine headframe, numerous smokestacks, and dozens of associated mine yard buildings. Irish immigrant John Ryan and wife Elizabeth purchased this home in 1899, and by 1900 the two-bedroom house teemed with their seven children. An eighth child arrived in 1902, and John died from kidney disease in 1909. Elizabeth continued to raise the younger children while her older children went to work in the mines and nearby businesses. After she died in 1937, her daughter Virginia and husband John Crotty remained in residence until the mid-1950s.
]]>The North Elevation neighborhood’s “smooth graded roads” and building lots with space for a backyard and a garage likely attracted Argyle and Jessie Scott to build this Craftsman style home in 1914. Inside, rich wood floors, substantial mahogany columns between the living and dining rooms, and a brick fireplace framed by built-in bookcases exemplify signature Craftsman details. Argyle managed the Billings Land and Irrigation Co. and was chairman of the Billings Chamber of Commerce’s Good Roads Committee, which advocated for improved roads and encouraged automobile travel. In 1915, to promote travel along the Yellowstone Trail, Argyle drove his six-cylinder Chalmers from Billings to Columbus in record time. He was one of many drivers across the country who relayed a letter from Chicago’s mayor to Seattle’s mayor in less time than it would take to deliver it by train. By 1924, barber Frank Key and his wife Birdie had purchased the home. Frank died suddenly in 1925 and by 1932, their daughter Frances and her husband Wilbur Lenhart, also a barber, had moved in with Birdie. The Lenharts remained in residence until the early 1970s.
]]>A ghost sign recalls the origins of the only homestead-era commercial building still standing in the area. At its height, Garneill boasted two general stores, three saloons, a lumberyard, three-story hotel, grain elevator, blacksmith shop, railroad station, stockyard, Methodist Episcopal church, and doctor’s office. Two railroads serviced the community. Canadian immigrant William S. Manley hired his brother David, a brick mason, to construct this store in 1910. Brick triangles decorate the cornice (roof line), and a corner entrance welcomes passersby from two directions. Natural light streams in through large plate-glass windows, and a pressed tin ceiling ornaments the interior. Since Manley also served as postmaster, the store doubled as a post office. Some of the original mailboxes remain. In the 1920s, drought and low commodity prices brought on hard times. Most people left Garneill, including Manley, who ultimately settled in Butte. In the 1940s, farmer John Peck purchased the abandoned building with the intention of converting it into a granary. Instead, after replacing the roof, he donated it to the Garneill Community Club in 1944. In 1947, the club added a kitchen. They frequently met here for meals, movies, dances, and holiday celebrations. This is also where Judith Gap High School held its annual junior/senior banquet, area boy and girl scouts held ceremonies and trainings, the Farm Bureau held its meetings, and people voted on Election Day. In 1974, only twelve people remained in Garneill. The Michael Hausman Filmhaus Foundation rehabilitated the building in 1986. It remains a local landmark and a community gathering place.
]]>Elizabeth McGuire moved to Montana Territory circa 1882, divorced her husband, and homesteaded in the Deer Lodge valley with two young sons. She built this two-story Italianate style rooming house circa 1893 on land she acquired from a neighboring rancher. Having worked at her father’s boarding house in Indiana, Elizabeth requested closets for all seven rooms. Her contractor protested saying closets were unfashionable, but she demanded the house be built for convenience, not style. She and sons lived here and next door at No. 112, while renting rooms to bachelors and married couples. Elizabeth, an intrepid, strong-willed woman, battled her contractor in court and once locked tenants out for several hours. In the 1920s, Elizabeth took in Euphemia Vautor, an elderly neighbor. Under Elizabeth’s care, Euphemia willed her nearly $10,000. After Euphemia died, her sister fought the will in court, and a judge ruled that Elizabeth had exerted “undue influence” on Euphemia’s “weakened mind.” Elizabeth died in 1927, and son Robert continued to rent out the house. Uuno Sahinen, State Geologist for Montana Bureau of Mines, and wife Margaret were in residence from 1945 to 1971.
]]>Barry O’Leary and Honora Shea both emigrated from County Cork, Ireland, he in 1898 and she in 1901. They met in Butte and married at St. Mary’s Church in 1906. By 1909 they had moved into this front-gable home half a block from the Gagnon Mine. Here, Honora raised four boys, who undoubtedly joined the neighborhood children playing at the mine dump. Barry worked forty-eight years for the Anaconda Company, first as a miner, then as an oiler, and then as a stationary engineer. He was also a long-standing city council member, first elected in 1932, and a four-term mayor (1941-1949). His political advertisements touted his fiscal conservatism and commitment to improving the city. The O’Learys were devout Catholics. Barry was also an Irish nationalist and member of the semi-secret Robert Emmett Literary Society, a revolutionary organization committed to achieving an independent Irish Republic by force of arms. The O’Learys built an addition onto the house in 1935, where they remained in residence until their deaths, Honora’s at eighty-one in 1965 and Barry’s at ninety-three in 1970.
]]>