The Reese Creek School, built in 1906, is one of 77 one-room schoolhouses built throughout Gallatin County mainly from the 1890s into the early 1920s to serve the families of one of Montana’s first agricultural regions. In the earliest days, classes met in private homes or in log-cabin structures. After statehood in 1889, four residents of any community could petition state government for financial assistance to pay a teacher’s salary and room and board. Horse-drawn transport dictated that schools be no more than five miles apart, and custom shaped the familiar planed wood, elongated-rectangle building, with a cupola-adorned hipped roof and boasting an entrance that protected pupils from weather. In Gallatin County, this style gradually evolved over the years, with the 1910s seeing influences such as “craftsman” style porches, and a few unusual designs such as the octagonal Malmborg school. But by 1919, the Montana Department of Health and Public Instruction had published a bulletin on school design, which provided blueprints and thus helped standardize schoolhouse design throughout the state.
]]>Incorporation in 1906 established Belgrade’s independence, but also created a need for local service offices. The Belgrade Bank, built in 1902, was already central to the town’s civic business as home of the telegraph line and newspaper. Though the structure’s castellated Gothic style rendered into western vernacular was reminiscent of the late 1880s, its formidable façade aptly represented hope for the town’s future stability. Noted Bozeman architect Fred F. Willson, then just launching his career, designed the addition to match and structurally join the older building. Completed in 1912, the new addition included the city jail and a second-floor theater. The glazed red brick façade features chimney-like extensions resembling battlements, while the brick parapet rises in the western false-front tradition. Originally, the parapet and cornice extended the length of both buildings, visually binding them together. A multipurpose building in the true sense, the Belgrade City Hall has served as police headquarters, fire station, court, library, post office, community hall, and even basketball court. Ironically, the older portion has lost its Gothic façade, but this 1912 structure remains one of two examples in the Gallatin Valley of this tenacious nineteenth-century style.
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