Lawyer Arthur J. Cunningham and his wife Edna built this remarkably well-preserved Craftsman style bungalow in 1915 for $3,300. The house retains nearly all of its original materials, including the narrow wood clapboard siding and wide wood trim, open front porch with tapered porch columns, and irregular-pattern wood shingles in the gable ends. Cunningham was a bankruptcy lawyer with the firm of Cunningham and Waldo. In 1922, he ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for state representative. By 1925, the Cunningham family had moved on and John and Jennie Bridenbaugh occupied the home. Jennie was a nurse and, with John, raised five children here, including one adopted daughter. Jennie was active in the Methodist Church and many public health charities and was state president of the American Association of University Women. In 1952, she was selected as Montana Mother of the Year. John was a radiologist who introduced the then newfangled practice of x-ray diagnosis and radiation therapy to Billings. His practice with partner Dr. Arthur J. Movius prospered and in 1939 became the Billings Clinic.
]]>Civil engineer Bill Lowe designed and built this house for his family circa 1940. The modest-looking home has several features more typically found in high-style homes. These include the clay tile roof, decorative chimney caps, and a bow window, placed to take advantage of the corner lot. The multi-pane casement windows echo the windows of its grander architect-designed neighbors. Bill and Connie Lowe lived here until 1951 except during Bill’s twenty-two months in the Navy during World War II. On the family’s return to Billings, Connie resumed her role as a society hostess and active church and club woman. Although she had an education degree, she never taught as the school district did not hire married women. Bill became a principal in the construction firm responsible for many projects at MSU-Billings (then called Eastern Montana College), including Cisel, Apsaruke, and Rimrock Halls and the Physical Education Building. When the family outgrew this one-story home, the Lowes found another corner lot on which to build, where they constructed a larger, two-story home based on the same design.
]]>Simple one-story brick commercial blocks became popular with investors in the early twentieth century. By economizing on ornamentation and expensive second floor residential fixtures like kitchen cabinets and indoor plumbing, a landowner could develop a large lot with a modest upfront investment. The three storefronts in this building, completed circa 1900, hosted numerous businesses over the years, including a tailor, music store, cyclery, hat shop, and physician’s office. Belgian-born Louis Frank Verberckmoes sold jewelry and eyeglasses from 1913 until 1925 in number 208. After construction of the Bluebird Theater to the west in 1925, Verberckmoes’ shop became the Bluebird Café. In 1913, plumber Herman Ulrich opened a plumbing shop in the 206 and 206 ½ (center) storefronts and lived in a rear apartment with his Norwegian-born wife Engiber and their three daughters. Ulrich’s shop was a fixture on Park Avenue for more than forty years. When Herman died of a heart attack while shoveling snow in 1937, Engiber opened a women’s dress shop, which remained in business here through the mid-1940s.
]]>In 1888, one- and two-story, wood-frame commercial buildings filled almost the entire block. Constructed circa 1890 on the block’s last vacant lot, this store was home to McKinnon and MacKay’s grocery. An expanse of brick with three recessed panels tops the building, making it look taller and more imposing than it is. Cast iron posts provide the structural support needed to incorporate large windows, which offered display space and allowed natural light to flood the shop’s interior. McKinnon and MacKay’s specialized in “the finest butter on earth” and in 1894 was the only store in Anaconda to offer produce from the Bitterroot valley. A soda water factory occupied the site in 1906. In 1908, it had become Mallory and Anderson’s, which sold everything from fresh Timothy hay and sawed wood to “Plymouth Rock pullets” and “choice geese.” In 1913, F. M. Osborne opened a machine shop, where he repaired cars, bikes, cash registers, and guns. Osborne also sold Wahl and Regal automobiles. Wahl and Regal were two of hundreds of short-lived car manufacturers that operated in the 1910s.
]]>Martin J. Plumb, wife Nancy, and their two grown children moved into their new bungalow in the fall of 1916. Builders Glenn Knodle and Frank McCabe built the house using catalog home plans and lumber from Kenyon-Noble Lumber Company. The house was so handsome it was featured in a 1917 Kenyon-Noble advertisement in the local paper. By this time residential trends favored the modest Craftsman style over the more exuberant Queen Anne style. The Plumb’s house featured key Craftsman stylistic elements in its large knee braces in the eaves, decorative window sashes, and interior built-in bookcases with tapered columns. Fittingly, Martin Plumb played a role in Bozeman’s early plumbing industry. He managed the Bozeman Water Works from 1902 until 1909 and later started a plumbing business with Charles Lundwall. By 1920, Plumb had opened a plumbing supply shop in Manhattan and remained in the plumbing business until his retirement in 1935. Widow Anna Winning purchased the home in 1940 and rented rooms to college students. Beloved Montana State University football coach Jim Sweeney and family lived here from 1962 to 1963.
]]>Anaconda’s business leaders located on the town’s west side beginning in the 1890s. The idyllic neighborhood was far from the smelter and close to commerce on Main and Park streets. Tree-lined sidewalks with street lamps, a large public park, and a new library attracted Anaconda’s upper- and middle-class families. The Kretzer family home, built in 1913, incorporates typical Craftsman elements in its side gable roof with prominent knee braces, an integrated full-width porch, and a gabled dormer. Triple, battered (tapered) porch columns with stepped capitals, arched moldings, and leaded glass windows further distinguish the home’s high-style Craftsman character. German butcher Otto Kretzer and wife Esther owned the Washoe Market, raised five children, and were energetic community boosters. Otto was a charter member of the local Kiwanis Club, and a singer in the Kiwanis Quartet. Esther was active with the Methodist Episcopal Church and Ladies Home Missionary Society. They lost their oldest son to appendicitis in 1920, another son to illness in 1941, and their youngest son, Jack, died a war hero in Japan in 1945. The Kretzers left Third Street after 1940.
]]>Contractor Fergus Kelley spent $4,000 building this handsome two-apartment residence in September 1900. He and wife Katherine, a well-known Butte vocalist and music teacher, lived at number 423 and rented the other half to tenants. In the early 1890s, this stretch of Mercury Street was a rough dirt road at the western edge of Butte, a checkerboard of empty lots, old log cabins, and new Queen Anne style cottages and boardinghouses. Butte’s population grew exponentially by 1900, and modern brick apartment houses quickly filled available lots with much-needed multi-family housing. Fergus and Katherine’s building, with its matching front porches, attractive decorative parapet, and distinctive window sashes, housed skilled mine workers and young professionals. Sadly, Fergus and Katherine enjoyed the property only briefly. Fergus died of lung disease in 1901, and Katherine eventually sold the building. Boilermaker Thomas Grimes and wife Agnes rented at number 423 from 1904 to 1925. Like many other working-class renters in Butte, the Grimes’s sublet their extra bedrooms to an ever-changing array of unmarried workers.
]]>As Butte boomed from 3,300 people in 1880 to over 20,000 in 1890 and over 45,000 in 1900, rentals remained in great demand. Built before 1891, this two-story brick building, which now houses four units, originally contained eight separate apartments. A large, open front porch (now enclosed) and a second porch that ran the entire length of the Jackson Street façade ornamented the exterior. In 1910, fifty-six-year-old widow Martha York served as the apartment house’s landlady, supporting four children, ages twelve to twenty-one. In addition to the Yorks, the building was home to an undertaker and his family (including four children), a copper miner and his wife, and four male lodgers. Mary Kelly, also a widow, ran the apartment in 1920. Because mining was such a dangerous occupation, Butte was known as a city of widows and orphans; running boardinghouses or apartments offered widowed women a way to support themselves without leaving home. The apartment’s residents reflected Butte’s diversity: the Irish-born Kelly rented to American-born, Irish, Bohemian, and Finnish tenants, whose occupations ranged from hod-carrier and miner to sheepshearer, electrician, waitress, and housekeeper.
]]>Rapidly increasing demand for copper ore in the 1890s brought an influx of more than 5,000 new residents to the Smelter City between 1890 and 1900. To house them all, a fleet of carpenters built hundreds of cottages and multi-family units. This brick boardinghouse, built in 1897, stands out from its Queen Anne cottage neighbors. The house’s hipped roof, wide fascia board, and segmental arch window frames reflect the Italianate style, popular in the West beginning in the 1870s. Advertisements for the rooms boasted electric lights and bathrooms, luxurious amenities at the time. Initially, working-class men and young families lived here. In 1900, smelterman J.C. Brennan and family and streetcar driver Michael Kilcoyne, his wife, children, and two brothers-in-law shared the house. By 1906, two women, fourteen smeltermen, and a policeman crowded into the residence. Grocer Marko Hotti, an immigrant from Albania, and his Czech wife, Louisa, lived here after 1924 and rented out rooms. Hotti’s Grocery was a fixture on Park Street until 1945. The house remained in the Hotti family through the 1990s.
]]>Wealthy banker Nesbit Rochester bought this bay-fronted brick building as an investment property during the summer of 1906. The building was listed among other “large homes” for sale that summer for $4,500. Nesbit and family lived just a few doors down at 845 West Mercury. Tastefully designed two-story brick buildings and larger apartment buildings proliferated in Butte at the turn of the twentieth century to house the city’s exploding population. Large or growing middle- and upper-middle class families could occupy both floors as a single-family home, while widows, small families, or investors could divide the floors into three-room apartments. In 1909, widow Mary Kelly lived here with her sons, deputy county assessor Thomas Kelly and deputy sheriff John P. Kelly. By 1923, Mary and sons had moved to Park Street, and her daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Malcolm McLeod, were in residence. The building’s distinctive flat-arch clinker brick lintels above each window and relief diamond pattern belt course at the roofline reflected the upper-middle-class status of its occupants and fit in well among its decorative Queen Anne style neighbors.
]]>Contractor A. M. Walker constructed this simple one-story brick commercial block for department store owner S. C. Adams in 1902. Though Adams did not pay to embellish the exterior of the building, he did spend lavishly on advertising and events. His window displays included oriental rugs and mannequins, and on opening day crowds of gawkers waited outside for the store to open. Inside, a band surrounded by palm trees played in the center of the store, and the cashiers served punch. To drum up business in 1903, Adams staged an expensive campaign to sell union clothing by distributing 1,800 union-made cigars and store flyers to men at the smelter. The stunt worked, but Adams sold the store in 1905 to open a Butte store. Soon after, Adams declared bankruptcy. By 1906, department store giants, the Strain Brothers, moved their Anaconda store here. Strain’s operated large stores in Great Falls, Billings, and Helena with the motto “You Can Always Do Better at the Big Store.” Strain’s closed in 1933 but the building continued to house various department stores, including Montgomery Ward and Schwartz’s.
]]>Margaret Barron bought what was then a new home, along with two vacant lots next door, in September 1909. The house, which originally had a smaller central shed-roof dormer, featured many popular Craftsman style elements. These included a low-pitched roofline, exposed rafter tails, a full-width porch, and natural building materials, in this case wood shingle siding and a foundation of river rocks. Both originally from Scotland, John and Margaret Barron met and then, in 1894, married in Butte. John worked at the jewelry store owned by Margaret’s family until the couple decided to move with their daughter Betty to Hamilton, where John opened Barron Jewelry. In 1915, the adventurous Margaret—whose solo automobile trips to Missoula and camping trips with friends appeared in the newspaper—died of cancer. John and Betty remained in the house, sometimes renting rooms to boarders, into the 1940s. They were joined by Betty’s husband, merchant Bud Smith, after the couple married in 1919. When John died in 1947, Bud and Betty’s son Ellsworth took over the Main Street jewelry store his grandfather had founded, continuing its operation until 1994.
]]>Family accounts associate the bunkhouse with the original Auchard homestead north of the Gehring Ranch. The log skids on which it rests indicate that the building was mobile and a team of draft horses could have dragged it from the Auchard’s. Bunkhouses fill a common ranch need—housing for hired hands. Although most of the hired hands who stayed here tended to farm and ranch duties, carpenter Nelson Sherburne lived in the bunkhouse in 1900 while he remodeled the Gehring House. Sherburne may have introduced lath and plaster to the bunkhouse interior. Often hired men would eat in the rancher’s house to discuss the day’s accomplishments and work plans, but the bunkhouse afforded its occupants privacy and the comforts of a soft bed and warm stove. The pages of a 1928 magazine glued to the walls, a common thermal improvement of the time, attest to the building’s marginal comfort. Although the bunkhouse fell out of use when Gehring acquired another used bunkhouse in 1929, this original bunkhouse served as an occasional home for transient men in search of work during the Great Depression.
]]>Made with a hand-operated press, cast concrete block was virtually unheard of in 1900. By 1906, however, when developer Charles Hefferlin contracted architect F. H. Palmer to design this two-story commercial block, over a thousand companies nationally manufactured the durable material. Locally, the Livingston Concrete, Building and Manufacturing Co. and contractor Herman Wolcott offered cast concrete in a variety of highly textured surfaces, allowing builders to imitate cut stone at a fraction of the price. For the Callender Block, Palmer chose a simple smooth, chamfered (beveled) block for the street and alley façade. He also specified cast concrete for the minimally decorated cornice while using brick—a more traditional and less decorative material—for the back of the building. Circa 1940, owners remodeled adding a wide band of structural glass block and black glass tiles. Although structural glass block became available at the same time as cast concrete block, it did not become popular until the 1920s. Its strong association with the Art Moderne style made it a popular choice for updating buildings.
]]>The masonry buildings in the heart of Walkerville reflect the town’s nineteenth-century silver-mining roots. Mining investors, the Walker Brothers of Salt Lake, and future copper king Marcus Daly began developing silver mines here in 1876. Joseph Broughton, another Salt Lake investor, likely built this substantial brick general store in 1880. By 1883, John Caplice and Alfred McCune acquired the building and in 1884 emblazoned “Caplice & McCune” high on the south wall. Silver markets slumped in 1893, and by 1897, St. Lawrence Catholic Church, a branch of St. Patrick’s in Uptown Butte, temporarily held services here while building a new church nearby. It later used the building to house St. Joseph’s Parochial School. In 1905, Mount Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church acquired and remodeled the building, adding pointed arch windows in the auditorium, a central meeting room, and a rear, six-room apartment for the pastor. The congregation was always small compared to Mountain View Methodist in Uptown Butte, and for many years it shared pastors with Centerville, Silver Bow Park, Wesley Chapel, and Meaderville. Despite their limited numbers, Walkerville Methodists worshipped here until 1972.
]]>In 1917, Charles and Gladys Pelton arrived in Stillwater County from Nebraska to become ranchers. Together, they created one of the most successful sheep ranches in Stillwater County. Charles “Charley” served as president of both the Stillwater Wool Growers Association and the Beartooth Stockgrowers Association. The Pelton family first lived in a small white house immediately south of here. In September 1927, they hired local contractor and mason Vern Garoutte, from Absarokee, to build this distinctive American Foursquare house. By February 1928, the Absarokee paper reported that the couple and their four children were “happily ensconced” in their new home, “a fine cobblestone two-story structure with basement, and … all modern conveniences, such as electric lights and waterworks and a fine fireplace. It is an ideal country home.” The American Foursquare was one of the most popular housing styles in the early twentieth century. The Pelton House includes all the style’s typical features: a square plan, a low pyramidal hipped roof with wide overhangs, two roof dormers on opposing roof slopes, and a full-width front porch. Yet it is the home’s construction that makes it unique; it is built with great skill of local cobblestones, many of which came from excavating the basement. The walls are twenty inches thick, and a massive cobblestone chimney dominates the north elevation. Gladys and Charley Pelton lived here until 1959. The Pelton House is an impressive example of cobblestone construction, skilled workmanship, durability, and beauty.
]]>President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs to bring the United States out of the Great Depression put millions of men to work and transformed local, state, and national public lands. While New Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) are best known for their efforts to preserve and restore ecosystems on public land, the CCC also devoted millions of dollars and man-hours to building roads, trails, and buildings on the same lands they sought to preserve. Between 1934 and 1941, CCC crews built over 100,000 miles of roads and trails, developed 52,000 acres of campgrounds, and built hundreds of shelters, cabins, and outbuildings, including over 2,400 “comfort stations” (bathrooms) nationwide. Camp Cavern CCC crews used plans by National Park Service (NPS) architect O. John Ballas to build this Rustic style comfort station in 1938. The building’s massive native granite walls and log rafters, natural hillside setting, and widely separated men’s and women’s entrances aptly reflect design ideals promoted in NPS publications between 1934 and 1965.
]]>Hardware store owner, banker, and real estate developer George Miles, nephew of Colonel Nelson A. Miles, hired a contractor to build this hipped-roof cottage around 1910. Following completion of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad in 1908 and passage of the Enlarged Homestead Act in 1909, newcomers flooded into Miles City and demand for housing soared. Developers focused attention on the spacious lots east of the Northern Pacific tracks. Families and wealthier landowners located away from the tracks, while investors like Miles built small rental cottages and apartment buildings near the tracks. Beulah Cresap and her husband William, the manager of the Golden Rule department store on Main Street, rented this Craftsman style home from 1912 to 1924. The home’s side bay window, exposed rafter tails in the eaves, and front porch (now enclosed) were common architectural elements found on the many Miles City houses built from “pattern book” plans. Dentist Dr. William Smart and wife Lydia bought the home in 1924. Dr. Smart was a state dental examiner and President of the Montana State Dental Association in 1932-33.
]]>A Jewish immigrant from Poland, tailor Henry Frank first arrived in Montana in 1867. He and his wife Barbara followed the Northern Pacific Railroad to Livingston, where they built the city’s first brick business block in 1883 on East Park. In 1890, Frank purchased a one-story wood-frame building on Main Street, which housed a grocer and a barber. The next year he cleared the lot to build this ornately decorated commercial block, “one of the most handsome and substantial structures in the city.” The façade features decorative brickwork, stone ornamentation, and an elaborate cast-iron cornice manufactured by Mesker Bros. Iron Works in St. Louis. Metal cornices, designed to look like carved stone for a fraction of the cost, were sold through the mail and shipped by rail in eight-foot sections. Advertising himself as the “merchant tailor,” Henry Frank offered men and boy’s clothing—from fine suits to the “heavy substantial clothing required by hunters, miners, [and] cowboys.” Although the building has housed Bob’s Outdoor (formerly Bob’s Army Store) since 1958, ghost signs still advertise Frank’s Clothier and the Levi Strauss overalls it sold.
]]>French immigrant and wealthy Deer Lodge Valley dairyman John Furst built this brick store and boardinghouse for $5,000 in 1895. Just steps away from Marcus Daly’s new bank and the fine Montana Hotel, the Furst Block fit in well amongst its high-style neighbors. The original street-level façade was richly decorated with cast-iron pilasters (still visible on the right and left). The well-preserved second story still reflects the type of elaborately patterned brickwork fashionable at the time. The J. T. Carroll Company, lumber manufacturers and dealers, and the Anaconda Business College were early first-floor tenants. Upstairs, Mrs. Radefeld let the rooms to “first-class gentleman.” Around 1900, Furst added a large two-story rear addition. While the first floor continued to house retail businesses, the second floor attracted non-traditional professionals. Tenants between 1900 and 1906 included astrologer Alexis Pfuhl, clairvoyants Madame Bell and Madame Yeteva, magnetic healer John Burtscher, and female osteopath Dr. Adele Allison. One of two licensed female doctors in town, Allison practiced medicine until her death in 1910. Goodfriend’s Clothing Company, a menswear store, occupied both storefronts from 1905 until the early 1930s.
]]>Residents in the North Helena Valley thought the early morning smoke rising near Silver Creek on September 8, 1928, was a wildfire. They soon learned that David Gehring’s barn was burning. The fire destroyed the barn and, to add insult to injury, took the lives of five horses. The large board-and-batten barn with its sweeping catslide haymow was less than thirty years old and insured for only half the cost of a new replacement. Despite the lack of insurance, drought, and rough economic times, David hired carpenters to rebuild the barn right away. Professionally designed and built barns like this one were a departure from the rough-hewn, labor-intensive buildings that preceded them. The new barn reflects the modern era of barn building and uses dimensional lumber and lightweight balloon framing. Its self-supporting gambrel roof housed a voluminous loft with a pulley and fork system attached to the ridge beam for easy hay loading. In 1933, David further expanded his milk operation when he added a combination cattle barn, milk shed, and loafing shed to the south of the corral.
]]>Women, and especially club women, played outsized roles in creating and maintaining the community institutions—churches, schools, and libraries—that they and their families valued. Providing an outlet for women to exercise their leadership skills, women’s clubs thrived in the late nineteenth century. By 1901, Montana alone boasted over fifteen women’s clubs, with at least one in every major town. Helene Dawson Edkins, a Blackfeet woman and the adopted daughter of one of East Glacier’s founding families, together with twenty-two other women, established the Glacier Park Woman’s Club on December 4, 1920. While some women’s clubs were stratified by race and class, the Glacier Park Woman’s Club welcomed all interested women. Initially, members took turns hosting meetings in their homes. In 1928, they acquired this lot from the Great Northern Railway. In 1933, they donated the site to Glacier County so that the county could commission the Civilian Conservation Corps-Indian Division (CCC-ID) to construct this saddle-notched log library and community hall. Part of the “Indian New Deal,” the CCC-ID employed 80,000 tribal members across the country to work to improve their reservations through pest control, weed eradication, and building projects, including dams, roads, fire lookouts, and other structures. The federally funded program could not perform work for private organizations, but after the hall was completed, the county deeded it back to the club. The hall is a good representation of Rustic architecture, a style associated both with park architecture and the CCC. The building continues to serve the community as a library, meeting space, and social center.
]]>The Lewis and Clark Caverns Headquarters building, designed by National Park Service architect O. John Ballas and built by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews in 1938, is a model example of the Rustic or “Parkitecture” style. Drawing on Arts and Crafts design ideals, architects working in western parks in the 1920s and 1930s used native materials, low horizontal forms, and earth-tone colors reflective of the natural environment. In Montana, architects Robert Reamer, Kirtland Cutter, Gilbert Stanley Underwood, and Thomas McMahon led the movement in Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. Their designs translated well in this region where use of native log and stone was a natural extension of settlement building patterns. CCC crews, commissioned under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal jobs program, quarried lichen-encrusted limestone from Cave Mountain for the massive tapered stone porch piers, chimney, and fireplace. These elements, along with cedar shingles on the clipped gable roof, rough-sawn tongue-and-groove siding, and exposed-wood interior trusses show the skill and talent of Ballas and the ability of CCC crews to harmonize the built and natural worlds in this rugged mountain landscape.
]]>The Great Northern Railway transported people and goods to, and through, northern Montana in the late 1880s and early 1900s. By the mid-1920s, however, automobile travel eclipsed rail travel. Soon, modern roads and new roadside service stations, motels, and cafes catered to auto travelers. The Northwest Refining Company of Cut Bank built this outstanding Streamlined Moderne style gas station in 1939. Texaco industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague adapted the style for gas stations in 1936, and oil companies nationwide followed suit. Teague specified white porcelain-enamel tile siding, but white brick or concrete block were common substitutes. Colorful horizontal “speed lines” at the roofline, large glass display windows, and enclosed service bays are other stylistic hallmarks. These design ideals were all aimed at making service stations appear as clean and modern as a new hospital and inviting to any type of driver. Danfield “Dan” Heltne leased the station from the outset in 1939. He initially sold Grizzly Oil Company products, and then, through different owners, sold Oval E, Carter, Humble, and Enco products through the 1960s. He purchased the station in 1974. Always a cheerleader in the community, Heltne spent years directing the May Music Festival, Kiwanis Club, the Salvation Army Board, and the Havre Chamber of Commerce Board. Dan passed away in 1990 and his son continued the business. Over the years, Heltne’s became a Havre institution and a Hi-Line landmark. When it closed in 2006, it was the longest continuously operated service station in the area.
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