South Central Avenue—renamed Willson Avenue in 1920—was the heart of Bozeman’s earliest residential neighborhoods. Elegant homes appeared along the avenue with the advent of the Northern Pacific Railroad. This home dates to that first period of growth. George Mardis, a warehouse clerk, came from Missouri with his widowed mother before 1880. He built this residence as a single-family home circa 1883. By 1900, attorney George D. Pease was the longtime homeowner. Born on a ranch near Gallatin City in 1871, Pease served as both city and county attorney and was well known throughout the state. By 1918, the Pease family still owned the home but rented it to tenants. In 1933, Pease’s son Douglas briefly took up residence and opened a restaurant, The Rendezvous, on the premises. In 1940, three families occupied the property. By 1947, it had become a two-family home. Like many residences in this neighborhood, the two-story main house has a large one-story wing. The home’s early footprint included an unusual side entry and offset orientation of the wing, which remains virtually unchanged since its construction.
]]>Big Prairie—beautiful, rugged, and remote—nestles between the North Fork of the Flathead River and timbered foothills. Even today the area is accessible only via an unimproved 1901 wagon road. Johnnie (John J.) Walsh first came to Big Prairie working as a freighter hauling oil from the railhead at Belton, Montana, into Canada. Walsh, born in 1885, grew up on a homestead near Columbia Falls where his parents were among the first settlers. Following their example, he filed a homestead claim here in 1907 and married schoolteacher Mary Harriet Smith in 1909. Like their homesteading neighbors, the couple grazed livestock and cultivated a small garden. Although Big Prairie’s remoteness discouraged visitors, tourism in Glacier National Park may have encouraged Walsh to build this guest lodge as a replacement residence in 1922. Walsh did the framing himself. He cut the timber and then horses pulled the logs through a homemade planing device. Neighbors Charles Schoenberger and Ed, Emil, and Axel Peterson helped raise the walls and finish the lodge. Clapboard covers the frame gable end while massive round logs, hewn on the interior and originally chinked with moss, form the walls. The Walshes occupied the first story, but the second floor interior and the guests’ log privy/shower were never finished. About this time, the park’s efforts to curb poaching may have discouraged local tourism, prompting the Walshes to abandon their hope of guests. Although the lodge and privy were moved from the original nearby homestead site in 1963, the nearly identical setting has preserved the homestead’s historic ambiance.
]]>Downtown Helena expanded in the 1940s at its north end where there had previously been little development. This two-story Art Moderne-inspired office building reflects the industrial, streamlined architectural trends of the period. E. B. Benson of the architectural firm of Haire and Benson, successors to the prominent firm of Link and Haire, drew the plans. The building was originally designed for the Hawkins-Lindstrom Medical Clinic. Dr. Thomas Hawkins and Dr. Everett Lindstrom were both longtime Helena physicians who formed a partnership in 1939. World War II interrupted their practice while both did military service. The two veterans returned to Helena, reopening as the Hawkins-Lindstrom Clinic in 1945. The clinic operated here from 1948 until the late 1980s. The basement offered office space; original basement tenants included the Merle Norman Studio; accountants Galusha, Higgins and Galusha; the Yellowstone Park Company; and several insurance agencies. The clinic converted to office space in the late 1980s, but the building retains its original appearance. A contrasting band above the second-story windows; smooth, stuccoed façade; offset entrance; and flat roof emphasize the horizontal orientation and stark simplicity of the Art Moderne style.
]]>Shortly before the end of World War II, Governor Sam Ford urged the Montana State Legislature to create a commission to regulate the state’s private and commercial aviation industry. The 1945 legislature subsequently formed the Montana Aeronautics Commission to encourage, foster, and assist in the development of aeronautics and encourage the establishment of airports and other air navigation facilities. Its first action was licensing commercial and private pilots operating in Montana. The commission was also responsible for the design, construction, leasing, and operation of small community airports throughout the state. It worked closely with the Civil Air Patrol, conducted search and rescue operations in conjunction with local authorities, kept statistics for the aviation industry in Montana, and aggressively sought to regulate commercial air traffic in the state per federal law. As the importance of aviation increased, so did the commission’s responsibilities. In 1957, commission director Frank Wiley, himself a pilot, lobbied the state legislature to authorize construction of a commission operations building adjacent to what was then the Helena Municipal Airport. Helena architects Ostheimer & Campeau designed the Modernist style administrative building in 1958. As commission responsibilities increased, in 1965 the same architects designed an addition and garage to complement the original building. The Modernist style, featuring natural colors and textures, large windows, and lack of ornamentation, characterizes government construction of the period. The Montana Department of Transportation’s Aeronautics Division illustrates the maturing of Montana’s aeronautical and aviation industries in the wake of World War II. It continues to play a critical role in Montana’s aviation industry.
]]>During Virginia City’s mid-1860s boom, residences and businesses crowded along Cover Street. Most commercial buildings were gone by the mid-1880s and the neighborhood became primarily residential. Irish immigrant Phillip Conrey, a rancher and two-term city treasurer, worked extensive Alder Gulch placer claims and built this two-story home in the 1880s. An open porch with turned spindles; tall, narrow windows; and clapboard siding are characteristic of the period. The interior features wood ceilings and an original staircase. A stone section likely predates the house; Conrey probably stored materials from his placer mining operations there. Conrey sold his Ruby Valley ranch for a mere $30,000; investors later dredged the property for gold making millions, much of it bequeathed to Harvard University. After several other owners, Anaconda Hotel owner Amanda McKeen bought the home in 1920. Upon her death in 1923, it passed to a niece. Alta Butler began her forty-year ownership of the home in 1933 after the death of her husband, deputy sheriff William Butler. The appearance of the home has changed little from the 1880s when it first appears in Virginia City photographs.
]]>Numerous archaeological sites scattered over 2,000 unspoiled acres form a cohesive unit that together illustrate subsistence activities of Native people before contact with Euro-Americans. For the earliest people and tribes who later utilized the area, this landscape furnished amenities critical to survival. Its fresh-water springs and plentiful grasses attracted humans and wildlife. Its natural landscape also facilitated the hunting and processing of large numbers of bison. Before acquisition of the horse circa 1750, cliff-jumps and impoundments were typical means of procuring bison. The district includes a cliff jump, adjacent steep-sided impoundment area, extensive processing site, and a prominent ridge system providing overviews of the terrain and bison loafing area. Two converging drive lines of more than 300 strategically placed rock piles, or cairns, facilitated funneling bison over the cliff or into the impoundment area. Larger cairns positioned on knolls and a rock-walled blind on the ridge may have aided the hunt. A stone-lined pit likely functioned as an eagle catch and/or vision quest site. More than fifty stone rings, or circles, grouped into three major concentrations, indicate places where tipis were erected. Charcoal from the hearths in the processing area yield environmental clues about life in earlier eras. Maple, chokecherry, and willow—not found in the area today—along with juniper, provided nutrition, medicine, and building materials. The earliest discovered artifacts at Stone Hill date to 1500 B.C., but most span a period of use from A.D. 1167-1800. The district’s pristine foothill terrain and remarkable human-made features afford a rare opportunity to better understand the lifeway of the first Montanans.
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Entrepreneur brothers Tommy and Billy Miles constructed this dignified building in 1903 strategically located across from the Northern Pacific’s new passenger depot. The first floor of the masonry business block provided the booming community with much-needed retail space. Early tenants included a sign painter, the National Guard Armory, and Western Union Telegraph. On the second floor, grand windows provided good ventilation and natural light for a public ballroom and concert hall. According to the newspaper, it was “a place for public amusement” unequalled “by any other edifice in the city.” The “elegantly fitted” facility seated more than 700 people, and local organizations, from the Order of Railway Employees to the High School Glee Club, quickly put it to use. After a new ballroom opened in 1907, the Park Theater and a rooming house shared the second story. In 1945, the American Legion Park Post No. 23 bought the building to serve its rapidly growing membership, bolstered by soldiers returning after World War II. By 1969, the post was Montana’s fourth largest, with 458 members. The Legion’s historic bar room remained as of 2017.
]]>John P. Gary came to Montana from Michigan with his brother, sister, and widowed mother. The Garys settled in Bozeman where John and his brother Martin opened a grocery store in 1900. Both brothers married and both established households on South Black. John built this stunning Victorian-era bungalow for his bride, Mary, circa 1904. The Queen Anne style home features a porch with classical columns nestled between gracefully rounded and octagonal bays. A central dormer above the porch offsets the asymmetry typical of the style. Original details include leaded and stained glass, a fireplace finished with oak, and an elegant turned stairway. The stylish home showcases John’s early success. Martin Gary followed his brother, building the home next door circa 1910. By 1912, the Gary brothers had branched out into the grain business and advertised their grocery as “…first-class and sanitary with goods kept free from exposure by means of refrigeration.” John and Mary, their six children, and extended family were in residence until 1921. Sheep rancher William Crowley then purchased the property as an in-town home for his large family.
]]>As the nearby town of Demersville relocated to the Kalispell townsite in the early 1890s, attorney George Grubb and his wife Fanny settled here in this gable-front-and-wing residence built for them circa 1892. After Fanny’s death in 1894, George took in boarders until 1906 when he married Josephine Brink, a widow with a young daughter. Although Grubb had no biological children, he opened his heart to his stepdaughter Nira and Margaret Shelton, the daughter of a deceased friend. He was a beloved father to the two girls and later, grandfather to their children. Grubb practiced law for fifty years, was Kalispell’s first city attorney, and served several terms in the state legislature. His peers considered him the “Dean of the Bar” in Flathead County and a lawyer’s lawyer. Colleagues often sought his counsel after hours in the office he kept at home. Grubb worked diligently for his clients every day, including the day he passed away at eighty-two in 1944. Although the addition of a back room before 1927 and remodeling have somewhat reconfigured the interior floorplan, the home’s original footprint survives.
]]>Built in 1915 at the height of Craftsman style popularity, this two-story home features the style’s characteristic exposed rafter tails and inviting front porch. Less typical is the way the porch extended over the driveway to create a sheltered place to park. The home also had a one-car garage facing the alley, a common amenity in Billings’ first automobile suburb. William and Olive Ladd and their two children lived here by 1917. A grain broker who advertised that he would “pay the high dollar” for carload lots of “wheat, beans, and hay,” William participated in Billings’ booming commodities market. In the 1920s, building and loan manager Joseph McMahon and his wife Catherine purchased the home, where they lived with their seven children. The McMahons were committed and active Catholics. Catherine helped organize fundraisers for Catholic orphanages and St. Vincent’s Orthopedic Hospital, while Joseph was a state-wide leader with the Knights of Columbus. Their fashionable home bustled with social activities—from bridge parties to progressive dinners. In the early 1940s, this was the childhood home of John Bohlinger, Montana’s twenty-ninth lieutenant governor.
]]>In 1905, James E. Waggener purchased the business of retiring undertaker Nelson Willoughby. At this time nationally, the mortuary business was in transition. Funerals in the previous century had traditionally been held in the home, and the undertaker provided such necessary accoutrements as casket, chairs, drapery, door badges, stationery, and flowers. After 1900, the home became less suitable for funerals, and the “funeral director” began to offer services in addition to goods. These included embalming, funeral arrangements, and transportation. Undertakers needed more space for laboratory facilities, casket sales, and reception services. In 1913, Waggener built this substantial brick building to replace Willoughby’s original two-room quarters at 134 West 2nd Street. The new building, constructed by local builder Caesar Haverlandt, offered a chapel with seating for sixty-five, a modern embalming room, up-to-date casket show rooms, and the area’s only receiving vault. Mahogany woodwork and sliding doors graced the family home upstairs; skylights, still in place today, brightened the kitchen and bathroom. Eventually the Waggeners’ three sons helped in the business and, in 1916, daughter Geneva married Harry H. Campbell who became a partner in 1919. The profession had its hazards, however. That year one of the Waggener sons, Elton, died from an illness he contracted while performing mortuary duties. Waggener and Campbell again moved to more modern facilities in 1929, and this building was converted for other commercial use. Architecturally typical of the 1910s, it is historically significant as an early Kalispell funeral home and pioneer family business.
]]>Simplicity, honesty, functionality, and efficiency were the architectural watchwords of the 1910s. Craftsman style bungalows like this one embodied the era’s minimalist aesthetic, and the style took the nation—and Billings—by storm. Characteristic of the Craftsman style, this circa 1915 home features a low-pitched roof pierced by a large dormer, leaded glass windows, and exposed rafter tails. More unique is the home’s side-gable orientation and vertical siding. The residence’s first occupant was Leslie Miller, the manager of Russell Milling Company. In 1919, Rockwood and Elizabeth Brown purchased the home, where they raised their four children. A few years later, they planted a blue spruce in the front yard, where it still stood in 2018. In 1946, on a trip to Seattle, Rockwood saw an outdoor brick fireplace with built-in oven and grill. On his return, he had a similar one constructed in the backyard. A prominent Billings attorney, Rockwood served on the State Highway Commission, the State Water Conservation Board, and the City Park Commission. Although Rockwood died in 1956, Elizabeth lived here until her death at the age of 103 in 1989.
]]>World War I (1914-1918) created an insatiable demand for copper, a primary component in warships, ammunition casing, and tanks. Since copper mining required explosives, in 1916 the DuPont Company decided to locate a dynamite manufacturing plant seven miles from Butte, home to rich copper mines. DuPont built the company town of Ramsay to attract workers to the isolated plant, which could produce 750,000 tons of dynamite a month. It situated Ramsay near the railroad, but far enough from Butte that an explosion—always a risk in a dynamite plant—would not affect the larger community. Believing that better living conditions resulted in greater worker efficiency, DuPont created a pleasant town with good infrastructure. Along wide, tree-lined streets the company built a large boarding house for single workers, attractive bungalows for married workers, and three large residences for company managers. The homes mainly followed three standard architectural designs, named after other DuPont company towns. Most common were the hipped-roof “DuPont-style” cottages, with a front hipped-roof dormer and small cutaway porches. The company also constructed six gable-roofed “Hopewell-style” cottages, with shed dormers and decorative shutters, and three smaller hipped-roof “Louviers-style” cottages. Demand for dynamite dropped precipitously after the war and DuPont closed the Ramsay plant in 1921. Throughout the 1920s, only three to four families lived in Ramsay. During the Great Depression, DuPont opened houses for non-company tenants. In the 1940s, DuPont sold the entire town to a former employee, who improved the houses and resold them to private buyers, transforming the company town into a Butte suburb.
]]>Nestled along the shore of Moose Lake, this collection of log and frame buildings is a fine example of how early mining ventures in the region gradually evolved into the U.S. Forest Service’s recreational residence program during the early- to mid-twentieth century. Among the first prospectors attracted to the area was mining promoter/artist Julian Itter, who filed several claims in the nearby Frog Pond Mining District. In 1918 Itter hired Martin “Moose” Johnson, a legendary local mountain man, to build a round-log cabin overlooking the lake. In 1924 Itter sold all his holdings to mining entrepreneur Leslie L. Savage, who convinced Inglis M. Uppercu, a wealthy New York businessman, to invest in his mining operations. Savage added a cookhouse, two sleeping cabins, a barn, and an icehouse/woodshed. Savage also received a recreational residence permit in 1928 under the Term Occupancy Act of 1915 that granted permits for private construction of summer homes on national forests. Both families enjoyed many happy summers at the lake until the mines failed during the Depression. Savage was forced to put the property up for sale. There were no buyers for several years, and the buildings fell into disrepair. Joseph Lyden bought and improved the cabins in 1945. Subsequent owners Elizabeth C. and John C. Hauck and later Tom and Jane Van Dyk carefully preserved and maintained the buildings and structures, which retain considerable integrity of design, function, and workmanship. The district illustrates the transformation from mining to recreation in an unspoiled setting in southwestern Montana.
]]>Open-air porches and balustrades on the first and second stories distinguish this transitional residence built circa 1910. At a time when architectural tastes were changing, the home reflects the asymmetrical Victorian-era Queen Anne style of the previous century. A steeply pitched gable roof, elegant stained-glass transom, bay window on the south, and classical Tuscan columns are Queen Anne hallmarks. A shed-roofed dormer on the north hints at the newly emerging Craftsman style. The residence was the longtime home of Norwegian immigrants Gilbert O. and Malene Gilbertson. Gilbert settled in Minnesota, farmed successfully for thirty years, and served as a state senator. When his first wife died in 1887, Malene Hoines came from Norway to serve as housekeeper. The two married in 1889 and added four more children to the family. The Gilbertsons moved to Flathead County in 1907 and built this home circa 1910. The couple’s widowed daughter, Ida Keeling, and her young son Clyde moved in shortly before Gilbert’s death in 1925. Ida married Charles Kretlow in 1936, and after Malene’s death in 1937, the Kretlows maintained the home into the 1940s.
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Seven hundred souls lie beneath the sod here in Virginia City’s community cemetery. Boot Hill across the ridge to the west was the first burial ground, but after interment of five road agents there in January 1864, citizens preferred to bury relatives elsewhere. Some even moved loved ones’ remains from Boot Hill to Hillside. The oldest marked grave is that of Joseph Watkins who died on March 22, 1865, but early-day graves were often left unmarked. Others buried here include Alder Gulch discoverer Bill Fairweather, Vigilantes of Montana author Thomas Dimsdale, African American businesswoman Sarah Bickford, wealthy banker Henry Elling, and many other prominent pioneers. A section at the east end accommodated Catholics. Hillside’s rich assortment of markers includes a few wooden headboards, antiquated mail-order obelisk style monuments, symbolic tree trunks—representing life cut short—and locally produced granite headstones. These illustrate the development of gravestone art in Montana. William Boyce Thompson gave the fence and gate in the late 1920s in memory of his three young siblings buried at Hillside.
]]>Montana Avenue was a wagon trail when the first students trekked across treeless pastures to class in 1888. The bell rang out over the valley promptly at 8:40 AM, letting children know that they had better not dawdle and were expected at their desks by 9:00. The teacher taught all grades and was also the building custodian. From 1888 to 1920, students pulled their desks close to the center stove in winter and celebrated spring in the schoolyard. Silver Creek’s name changed to College Place School in the 1890s when the Wesleyan College campus, and later the Deaconess School, operated down the road. The Little Red Schoolhouse, as it came to be known, was the heart of the surrounding agricultural community. For three decades it served the educational and social needs of farming families far removed from the town life of Helena, three miles distant. In 1921, Helena District #1 began busing students from the valley into town, ending the school’s original function, but its role as a critical social link continued. The Sunshine Home Demonstration Club added an east wing and kitchen in the 1920s, and the schoolhouse served as a polling place, picnic center, and meeting place for clubs and 4-H groups through the 1950s. Time took its toll, and the school deteriorated and was finally abandoned in the mid-1960s. A fifteen-couple committee rallied to purchase the property from the school district in 1980. They restored and furnished the building and reinstalled the original bell, assuring the red brick schoolhouse a permanent niche in the valley’s history.
]]>Pack mules provided the only access to this site in 1932, when U.S. Forest Service personnel constructed the Double Arrow Lookout. Built following the L-4 plan designed by Clyde Fickes, the structure overlooks the Clearwater River drainage from atop a twenty-foot tower. Fickes’ detailed plans specified pre-cut and labeled lumber, so employees with limited carpentry skills could assemble the structures. Notable design elements include a three-foot catwalk, ribbons of nine-light windows (providing a 360-degree view), and a pyramidal hipped roof. Hipped roofs used shorter lengths of lumber than gable roofs, making it easier to transport material to the site by pack train. The fourteen-by-fourteen-foot structure doubled as living quarters for the lookout man stationed here during fire season. This is one of the first L-4 style lookouts built after Region 1, which included all of the forests in Montana and Northern Idaho, approved Fickes’ design in 1931. After World War II, Region 1 increasingly abandoned “fixed detection points” (lookouts) for “aerial detection” (airplanes and helicopters), and the number of lookouts dropped from 844 in 1945 to 272 in 1954. The Forest Service continued to staff lookouts with views of high value lands that suffered frequent fires; the Double Arrow Lookout remained in use at least until 1967 and likely into the 1980s. Once it was no longer needed as part of the Lolo National Forest’s ground detection network, the structure was abandoned and began to deteriorate. Crews restored the lookout in 2006 to become part of the Forest Service’s cabin rental program.
]]>Unlike most fire lookout houses, which are typically placed on towers, the West Fork Butte Lookout sits directly on a rocky knob. The fourteen-by-fourteen hipped-roof structure features ribbons of nine-light windows, a testament to the building’s original purpose. The lookout follows the Forest Service’s standard L-4 plan, created by Clyde Fickes in 1931. Fickes’ detailed plans specified pre-cut and labeled lumber, so crews with limited carpentry skills could assemble them. One of seventeen lookouts built in 1934, West Fork Butte Lookout reflects the Forest Service’s emphasis during the 1930s on improving infrastructure to facilitate fire-fighting. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews—employed as part of a New Deal work relief program designed to provide jobs for young men during the Great Depression—deserve credit for most of these improvements. In Region 1, which includes Montana, the CCC built over 2,500 miles of forest roads, installed ninety-three lookouts, and strung the hundreds of miles of telephone lines that lookouts used to report fires. Two telephone poles from the spur line that connected West Fork Butte to the Skookum Butte Lookout still stand. Although the Forest Service preferred to employ men, women sometimes did staff lookouts, especially during World War II, when male labor was scarce; Missoula resident Dortha Stritch, wife of Forest Service employee Hollis Stritch, worked here in 1943. The Forest Service downgraded West Fork Butte to an “emergency lookout” before 1967. It now manages the property as a cabin rental, although the Missoula Ranger reserves the right to reclaim it as a detection point in severe fire years.
]]>In the early days of the U.S. Forest Service, pack animals carried critical supplies and equipment to crews fighting forest fires. In 1929, a severe fire season exhausted the supply of trained mules and skilled packers. Forced to use unbroken animals, inexperienced packers, and poorly fitted tack, the Forest Service saw serious delays and injuries to animals and humans. Regional Forester Evan Kelley vowed never again. A former World War I cavalry officer, Kelley acquired the Ninemile Ranch to breed and train mules. Between 1933 and 1935, the Civilian Conservation Corps built roads, fences, and Cape Cod style buildings modeled after U.S. Army Cavalry remount depots. The Ninemile Remount Depot became the largest mule ranch in the Northwest with sixty Forest Service staff and some two hundred pack animals prepared for immediate dispatch during fire season. Depot shops provided packsaddles to the entire Northern Region and supplied horse and mule shoes to Forest Service animals across the U.S. The site accommodated both the Ninemile Ranger District and the Remount Depot. Aerial firefighting diminished the need for pack animals and the depot closed in 1954, but mules and horses continue to fulfill a critical need. Still a working ranch and district headquarters, the site is now home to the Northern Region Pack Train and Ninemile Wildlands Training Center, providing training in horsemanship, packing, and traditional skills. The crisp white siding, shuttered windows, and green-gabled roofs of the shops, barns, and residential buildings have been carefully preserved. Although some buildings have been repurposed, the grounds visually recall the facility’s original function.
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Sweeping views of the Mission and Swan mountain ranges at an elevation of nearly 7,500 feet aided the U.S. Forest Service in early fire detection. From 1957 through 1967, Mineral Peak was a primary lookout point. Lolo National Forest Service staff built the current station to replace a previous lookout. The Wood Fabricating Company in Portland shipped the lookout house kit to Montana. Since the site was accessible only by pack trail, a Forest Service crew bulldozed and bladed a thirteen-mile road from Gold Creek to the top of Mineral Peak. They then drove the bundled materials to the site for assembly. The 1936-pattern L-4 Lookout House sits atop a 53-foot straight timber tower. The house portion is of simple V-Rustic wood siding capped with a pyramidal roof of green-stained sawn cedar shingles. Ribbons of windows on all four sides afforded views of the surrounding forest. Most of the original top-hinged shutters, all but one now in the closed position, remain. Four flights of open stairs lead to the catwalk that spans the perimeter of the lookout. The site served until 1968 when an inspection determined that Mineral Peak had reported few first discovery fires. The 15,400 acres of surrounding forest contained no high values of timber and the access road was poor. Given these deficiencies, the Forest Service downgraded the site to an emergency lookout. By 1974 it was manned only during extreme fire danger and began to deteriorate. Vacant from 1980 to 2005, the Missoula Ranger District refurbished the lookout to shelter occasional backpackers and hikers.
]]>In 1883, Wetzstein Hall, a two-story wooden building with a liquor wholesale operation on the first floor and a public hall on the second, stood on this site. In 1902, Fred Pape opened the National Park Steam Laundry here. He purchased the building in 1903, only to see it burn to the ground a few months later. The fire, which started in Pape’s laundry, caused an estimated $20,000 of damage and destroyed two other wooden buildings on this block. The street’s brick buildings were spared. Pape hired builder-architect John Sundberg to construct a dignified two-story, fire-resistant brick business block. Completed in three months, the 1904 building originally housed Frank Bliss’s Solo Saloon on the first floor. The second floor became a lodging house, managed by Pape’s wife Clorinda. In 1910, Clorinda rented the rooms to a baseball player, farm laborer, waiter, real estate agent, waitress, and railroad conductor. During Prohibition, the Solo became a soft drink parlor and relocated, but according to local lore, the New York Candy Kitchen, which occupied the first floor, doubled as a speakeasy.
]]>Dubbed one of Billings’ “pioneer building contractors,” Emanuel Lindstrom waited until age thirty-eight to marry twenty-two-year-old Radina Holen, a fellow immigrant from Norway. In 1913, the Lindstroms moved into this Prairie style residence, where they raised three children. The two-story American Foursquare home features restrained geometric ornamentation, a hipped roof with extended eaves and a central attic dormer, and a wraparound front porch, enclosed sometime after 1958. Between 1912 and 1923, the Lindstroms added a two-car garage, a reflection of the growing importance of automobiles to North Elevation homeowners. Home prices suffered during the Great Depression and the residence, valued at $10,000 in 1930, was worth only $6,500 in 1940. Benjamin Harwood purchased the residence from the Lindstroms in 1937, just a year after Benjamin was first elected district judge. A dedicated jurist, Ben was also interested in aviation. A World War I pilot wounded in France, he was instrumental in developing the Billings airport as chairman of the airport commission. He and his wife Nina lived here until 1971.
]]>The elegant Second Empire style, rare in Helena, is beautifully expressed in this three-story residence built circa 1880 during Helena’s stint as territorial capital. Jerome and Marcia Norris, longtime resident owners, counted Helena’s social elite among their circle of friends. Jerome had cattle interests and several butcher shops. After 1884, he changed careers to ore mining. By the 1900s, the Norrises took in boarders. Among them, from 1908 to 1911, was photographer S. J. Culbertson whose rented rooms included his studio. From 1911 to 1914, the residence served as the first home of the Helena Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), offering safe housing for working women, female travelers, and young girls from rural homes attending high school. The YWCA also ran a lunchroom on the premises, well patronized by courthouse employees. By the 1920s, Mrs. T. J. Walker’s boarding house advertised Mrs. Baker’s “Good Home Cooking,” and by 1940, there were four apartments; Marguerite Mayer was the owner/landlady. The home today retains its mansard roof, molded cornices, and ornate brackets and eaves, grandly symbolizing the importance of Courthouse Square and Helena’s significant role as territorial capital.
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