Between 1906 and 1916 the Northern Pacific Railroad expanded rapidly in Missoula, attracting hundreds of new workers. In response, investors constructed rental homes and boardinghouses near the tracks. Irish boardinghouse owner and real estate investor Rose (Fergus) Merrick built this worker’s cottage circa 1911. The well-preserved hipped (pyramid) roof home and its nearly identical neighbors exemplify typical early-twentieth-century worker housing. Many railroad workers and their families rented the home, including a fireman and an engineer. Rose owned multiple properties and was among many widowed and divorced women who made their living from rental housing. After her fourth marriage ended in divorce, she married Northern Pacific depot master Martin Merrick in 1910. He filed for divorce in 1912, and Rose sued for alimony, claiming he married her to gain access to her rental properties. Ultimately, Rose dropped the alimony suit, a judge granted the divorce, and Rose kept her properties. When she died in 1922, Rose left her real estate, valued at $26,000 (approximately $918,000 in 2026 dollars), to her niece, Kate Sharpe, who leased the home to tenants until 1950.

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Prominent Missoula architect A. J. Gibson designed this fine Neoclassical style residence for Joseph and Barbara Redle in 1902, and contractors completed it in 1906. A shingled pediment with a half-circle window, Doric columns, and a wide entry with leaded glass windows define its style. While Gibson’s design for the nearby Joseph Dixon residence boasts far more ornamentation, the Redle residence reflects Gibson’s ability to tailor his designs to his customers’ taste and budget. Joseph, a brewer, was treasurer of the Garden City Brewing Company, and Barbara stayed home to raise their three daughters. In 1916, after the city completed the Pine Street boulevard, the Missoula Women’s Club proposed changing the street name to Worden Way to honor civic leader Frank Worden. Barbara, with dozens of other Pine Street women signed a petition in protest, stating that “Mrs. F. L. Worden named Pine Street and we, … respectfully ask that the name … be not changed in any way.” The Redles were divorced by 1920, and Barbara sold the home in 1922 to Northern Pacific Railway machinist Eugene Wigal and his wife Anna.

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Claude A. and Madge Colby bought this well-preserved Craftsman style bungalow in 1919. The home displays typical features of the genre including a low-pitched hipped roof, unboxed eaves with exposed rafter tails, and a front porch with tapered columns. Claude and Madge were both education advocates. Claude worked at the Missoulian newspaper and Madge was a teacher who participated in Missoula’s P. E.O. Sisterhood, a group that raised money for women’s education. Retirees John F. and Catherine Fox purchased the house in 1926. They had operated a mercantile in Twin Bridges but moved to Missoula to be close to their children and grandchildren. Their daughter Edna Fox McCormick earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from University of Montana in 1910. Her husband—lawyer Washington J. McCormick II—served in the state legislature in 1918. His father was an early developer in Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley and his uncle was Missoula founder Christopher P. Higgins. The Foxes spent summers in the home and rented to students until Edna and her daughters moved to the house in 1938.

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Missoula businessman Roy Van Wart built this Queen Anne Free Classic style home and the identical house next door in 1905. The mirror-image homes feature steep cross-gable hipped roofs (reflecting the Queen Anne style) and Classical details such as square porch columns and prominent cornice returns at the eaves. In 1906, Charles La Fayette Kellogg and wife Marion purchased the house. They had no children but shared the home with five extended family members. Charles, a lawyer and University of Montana law school lecturer, owned Northwestern Abstract & Title Company and was president of the Missoula Chamber of Commerce. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1910, helped welcome President Theodore Roosevelt to Missoula in 1911, and was chairman of the local Good Roads committee. Marion was director of the Missoula Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), which provided education, lodging, and meals for young women. After Charles died in 1918, Marion became the national field secretary for the YWCA Northwestern District. In 1922, she sold the home to Northern Pacific Railroad engineer Edward J. Adams and his wife Kate. They remained in residence until 1930.

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The Missoula Woman’s Club purchased these corner lots for $10 in 1909, hoping to build a clubhouse. The club eventually built on the University of Montana campus, and in 1922, Kenneth Keith Ross and wife Gladys (Simerson) built this classic American Foursquare style home. The style name refers to its boxy yet practical design. Most Foursquares are cube-shaped with a hipped roof and a floorplan comprised of four, roughly square rooms on each floor arranged around a central hall. Kenneth was vice president of the Montana Logging Company and son of Kenneth Forbes Ross, general manager of Anaconda Company’s Bonner logging operations. The Rosses moved to California in 1925 and rented the home to the Alpha Xi Delta sorority, one of the oldest women’s fraternal organizations in the United States. About fifteen female college students shared rooms, studied, and entertained here with supervision from house mother Laura Corbley and later Barbara (Hayes) Higgins, widow of Missoula mayor Francis Higgins. Major Frank Milburn and wife Amanda (Bamberger) rented the home in 1928. Frank commanded the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps battalion and coached sports at the University of Montana until 1931.

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University of Montana instructor Harold Lansing and wife Irene bought this house in 1922 when it was new. The home’s design suggests that it came from a pattern book, a catalog of mass-produced architectural plans. The second-floor shingle siding, overhanging eaves with exposed decorative rafter tails, and knee brackets evoke typical Craftsman style hallmarks, while the interior layout reflects the American Foursquare floorplan. Harold taught forestry engineering and Irene worked as a homemaker. She also led the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority alumni club and the American Association of University Women local chapter. The first of two tragedies struck the Lansings in 1923 when Harold died at age twenty-nine. His parents, Joseph and Meda Lansing, moved in with Irene by 1925. Then, in 1930, Joseph died suddenly following a head injury. Meda sold the home to George and Eileen Duncan in 1936. The Duncans both worked in the engineering division at Missoula’s U.S. Forest Service office. After George died in 1945, Eileen remained in residence. She retired in 1965 and lived here with her second husband until her death in 1985.

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The mining industry’s voracious demand for wood attracted workers to Missoula’s growing timber industry, increasing demand for housing. Homes like this classic Craftsman style bungalow, built circa 1918, appealed to Missoula’s new residents. Its exposed rafters, clapboard and shingle siding, and boxy porch supports illustrate the style’s emphasis on natural materials and craftsmanship. George and Sadie Fox lived here in 1918. George speculated in timber after a long career as a lumber estimator with the Anaconda Company, and Sadie was a clubwoman. Rancher Albert Hall, Sr., and his wife Ida, made their home here in 1920. The Halls divided their time between their Potomac ranch and Missoula residence. Dwight and Florence Miller purchased the house in 1934. Dwight worked in Anaconda Company timber camps, first as a scaler and then as a clerk, spending extended periods away from home. The Millers’ son Dwight studied forestry at the University of Montana and played center for the Grizzly basketball team. In the summers, he drove the “Galloping Goose,” a single-car, self-propelled train that shuttled loggers from Bonner to timber camps in the Blackfoot valley.

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Architect J. F. Everett designed this Mission Revival style brick bungalow for builder A. C. Hollenbeck in 1904. The home’s curvilinear dormer and gables, multi-paned decorative windows, and arched lintels topped with keystones exemplify the style. A. C. Hollenbeck owned the Missoula Brick and Cement Company and, not surprisingly, his homes prominently featured brick construction. John and Olive Green bought the house in 1907. John and his partner Lou Ellinghouse co-owned a livery and taxicab company. They sold the business in 1915. John subsequently served as Missoula city commissioner and, in 1916, voters elected him Missoula County sheriff. As sheriff, he primarily focused on enforcing Progressive-era laws against alcohol, gambling, and vice. Olive served as matron for the female inmates, even escorting an alleged check forger from Colorado back to Missoula to face charges. John lost his bid for re-election in 1924. Dr. James Graybeal and wife Alberta bought the home in 1927 and lived here until 1932. Various superintendents for the Amalgamated Sugar factory resided here from 1932 to 1936, when the company sold the plant to American Crystal Sugar.

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Missoula co-founder Christopher Higgins platted the Higgins Addition in 1882, anticipating the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad. At the time, Frank Worden’s farmhouse at 328 East Pine Street was the only house in the subdivision. The neighborhood grew steadily after 1883 as small houses for railroad workers emerged on Pine Street east of Jefferson, and a few large homes and middle-class boardinghouses filled the lots around Worden’s farmhouse. The south side of this block remained vacant until 1903 when Joseph and Theresa Steiger built the boardinghouse next door at 427. In 1909, Theresa, who was widowed, bought this lot and commissioned the small cottage near the alley for rental income. James and Della McCarthy, boarders in Steiger’s house, bought the property in 1924 and built the five-room bungalow in front of the older cottage. The bungalow’s narrow wood siding, exposed rafter tails in the eaves, and gabled entrance porch are hallmarks of the Craftsman style. Frank and Doretta Miller bought the property in 1938. They rented out the rear house for $22.50 and the larger bungalow for $37.50 per month.

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Missoula contractor Edwin S. Newton built this brick carpentry shop and office behind his home circa 1910. The building’s large size and patterned masonry along the stepped parapet reflect Newton’s prominence as one of Missoula’s leading contractors. From his office, which was originally attached to the north wall facing Clay Street, Newton managed about twenty-five men working on various building projects. From 1890 to 1946, he helped transform Missoula from a tiny mill town into a sprawling trade center supporting the university, government, and railroad, timber, and agriculture industries. Newton’s major projects included the Chaney Block, the Eddy Block addition to the Florence Hotel, the Harnois Theater, the 1910 City Hall, and the 1913 Missoula Trust and Savings Bank. After he retired in 1937, he converted the shop into apartments, and in 1938, became the county’s first official building inspector. From age seventy-four to eighty-two, Newton authorized all new construction and remodeling in the Garden City. Many of Newton’s buildings have been demolished or radically altered, but his shop remains an unchanged symbol of his impact on Missoula’s built environment.

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Missoula’s south side neighborhood developed quickly after the Milwaukee railroad arrived in 1908. By 1912, an eclectic mix of middle-class Queen Anne, Classical Revival, and Craftsman style homes occupied almost every lot. In 1913, Missouri natives John S. and Julia Leach became the first owners of this hipped-roof, Craftsman style bungalow. The home’s wide overhanging eaves with exposed rafter tails, dormer windows, and boxed bay window in the dining room are typical stylistic elements. John Leach was an owner and printer at the Missoulian Publishing Company. From 1902 to 1941, he ran the machinery that printed the Missoulian and later the Missoula Sentinel newspapers. Julia stayed home with their two daughters and was active with the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Ladies Aid Society. The Leaches moved out in 1922, and by 1925 meat market owners Julius and Ida Bachman lived here. Other residents included Northern Pacific Railroad conductor John E. Munro and family, from 1927 to 1929, and Missoula Fire Department mechanic James D. Russ, wife Blanche, and son Edwin from 1930 to 1934.

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A covered mill race (water channel) that provided power to the nearby Missoula Flour Mill snaked through the backyards of this block from 1864 until the early 1900s. Beginning circa 1884 a laundry business occupied this site. By 1893, Chinese immigrant Gee Quong ran the Sam Quong Hang Laundry. Quong moved the laundry to Main Street in 1901. Circa 1910, Edwin S. Newton built this vernacular style house and a brick carpentry shop behind it. The home features an intricate cross-gable roof line and a cutaway porch with a sloping half-gable above the main entry. Edwin came from Ohio to Missoula in 1890 to work with architect A. J. Gibson. Under Gibson's tutelage, Newton proved an able carpenter and builder. He opened his first shop in the old Missoula Flour Mill in 1894 and soon became a prominent Missoula contractor. Newton’s wife Louise died in 1917, and he married Ina Rockwell in 1918. By 1920, Newton had converted the residence into a duplex. He and Ina lived on one side and managed tenants on the other side until they moved circa 1934.

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As one of the first paved streets in Missoula, South Third Street West became a desirable middle-class address and a major thoroughfare in the 1890s. Electric lights lit the street at night and by 1894, a horse-drawn streetcar provided public transportation; fifteen years later an electric trolley replaced the streetcar. C. N. Nelson purchased this lot in 1906 for $400 and, by 1910, Herbert Bickenbach, superintendent of the Missoula Street Railway Company, lived here with his wife Helen and daughter Senta while building a home on Central Avenue. The bracketed cornice and pedimented front porch supported by incised wood columns embody key characteristics of this foursquare Colonial Revival home. Foursquare refers to the floorplan, which features four, roughly equal-size rooms on each floor. Frank and Jessie Cool lived here with their four grown children between 1913 and 1917. Missoulian typesetter and printer Thomas Weaver, wife Mary, two daughters, and a boarder lived here between 1918 and 1920. Shoe store owner Ralph Ogg, his wife Etta, and three children lived here between 1930 and 1945.

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Missoula architect A. J. Gibson, known for civic buildings like the Missoula County Courthouse and grand residences like the Daly Mansion in Hamilton, also designed smaller homes. The populist architect believed that all Americans deserved high-quality homes built “with a view to convenience and economy.” Gibson designed this house for Charles and Alice Owen. Like many of Gibson’s homes, this one features a standard Queen Anne style floor plan. The balustrade topping the front porch and stone foundation are Gibson trademarks. He also incorporated Colonial Revival style elements, including porch columns and exaggerated pediments on the dormers. Bricklayer and contractor Charles Owen built this house circa 1902 and at least three other dwellings in the 700 and 800 blocks of Monroe. In 1908, the Owens sold the residence to Harry H. and Mary Gilbert Hughes. The Hughes family owned the Hughes Gardens, a truck-farm business near Hell Gate Canyon that contributed to Missoula’s reputation as the “Garden City.” It operated from 1909 to 1971. In the early days, Hughes Gardens sold vegetables to Garnet and Philipsburg; later they sold vegetables as far as Billings.

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Typically two-and-one-half stories, with a low hipped roof and large central dormer, American Foursquares were economical to build and comfortable to live in. Their rectangular plan maximized living space without adding expense. This brick example is one of the “Three Sisters,” three very similar homes built on the 600 and 700 blocks of South Second West between 1902 and 1912. William and Nell MacGregor moved into the “completely and artistically furnished” house after their wedding in 1913. A Scottish immigrant with a background in banking, William worked as assistant treasurer for the Missoula Mercantile Company. Nell, who grew up just a few blocks away, was an accomplished pianist, who graduated from the Strassberger Conservatory in St. Louis. After her marriage, she became a program leader for the Missoula Woman’s Club music department. The home’s longest residents were Jacob and Birdie Heydorf who lived here from 1922 into the 1970s. Jacob was plant chief for Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph; during his tenure with the company he saw the number of telephones in Missoula increase from “about 500 to more than 11,000.”

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White Sulphur Springs businessman Harvey Spencer bought this newly constructed Queen Anne “Free Classic” style boardinghouse in 1902. The cross-gable roof and side bay window represent the Queen Anne form, while the pedimented porch entry and eave returns evoke the classical style. Of the many tenants who lived here, three important women stand out. In 1903, University of Montana (UM) English professor Frances Corbin rented the house. She spent twenty-six years teaching at UM and served as dean of women. Before she retired, Corbin Hall was named in her honor. From 1904 to 1906, Spencer’s daughter, Clarissa, an English major, lived with the Corbins. Clarissa later earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, taught high school English, and was director of Missoula’s Socialist School. Her colleague Martha Plassmann rented rooms here in 1907 and 1908. Plassmann taught music lessons, wrote a column titled “Socialist Notes” for the Missoulian, and supported the radical Industrial Workers of the World labor union. In 1911, Plassmann moved to Butte to manage Socialist Louis Duncan’s successful mayoral campaign.

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Missoula architect A. J. Gibson replicated this row house apartment building’s architectural details from an almost identical building he designed on South Second Street. Contractor David Andrews built both buildings in the early 1900s to meet Missoula’s growing demand for housing. The quiet south side especially grew in popularity after the arrival of the Milwaukee Railroad in 1908. Both buildings feature two projecting front bays, an appealing way to bring more light into the front rooms of the attached apartments. Ionic columns support the open front porches, which are topped by second-floor balconies, giving each apartments’ occupants access to outdoor space. The prominent cornices and the two circular windows, centered on the second-floor façades and encircled by keystone brickwork, add visual interest. Each apartment has its own door, an implicit answer to fears expressed by moralists that apartments encouraged promiscuity by allowing unmarried people to access one another’s residences through interior hallways. In 1920, tenants in this building included a carpenter and his family, a stenographer and her mother, a female bookkeeper, and a young civil engineer and his wife and child.

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A women’s club founded the Missoula library, which grew out of an 1882 ladies’ reading group. By 1894, the city library had 500 volumes and had secured public tax support. Six years later, Missoula residents had access to almost 5,000 books from the library’s rented downtown rooms. In 1903, both the chair of the women’s club library committee and Missoula’s mayor contacted steel magnate and library benefactor Andrew Carnegie, requesting funds for a dedicated building. Carnegie, who funded over 1,600 libraries nationwide and 17 in Montana, pledged $12,500 toward the new building. For this “temple of learning,” Missoula architect A. J. Gibson offered a neo-classical design, coincidentally incorporating many stylistic elements later associated with Carnegie Classic design. After Missoula’s population quadrupled between 1900 and 1910, the library requested additional funding from the Carnegie Foundation. It received a second grant of $9,000 in 1911. Architect Ole Bakke designed the second-story addition, adding Craftsman style elements without obscuring the essence of Gibson’s original design. In 1974, the library moved to larger quarters, but the building continues to serve the public as the Missoula Art Museum.

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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.

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Newspaper pressman Portus B. Thornton and his wife Victoria were the original owners of this Colonial Revival/Folk Victorian transitional cottage built circa 1905. Thornton came to Missoula from his native Canada in 1901 and married that same year. A trained printer, Thornton went to work at the Missoulian and, in the mid-1910s, he and a partner established the Missoula Bureau of Printing. As a veteran member of the local printer’s union and its longtime secretary, Thornton was a key player in the development of the local press. The Thorntons were at home here until 1929. Their charming home features a centered entry, front gabled roof, clapboard siding, and square Tuscan columns. These elements showcase the clean lines and classical features designed to recapture a simpler, more modest time. Influenced by the various expositions and World’s Fairs, such classical elements began to replace the well-loved Queen Anne style of the Victorian era. The home beautifully illustrates this shift. The open porch with pedimented roofline and latticework at the foundation as well as original interior bullseye molding throughout reveal the persistence of Victorian-era details.

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Julia and Aaron Conner homesteaded in the Bitterroot Valley in 1882 where they prospered and raised six children. Aaron was elected judge at Darby in 1886 and served as Speaker of the House in the Montana legislature in 1900 and 1903. After Aaron died in an accident in 1905, locals named the community Conner in his memory. Julia moved to Missoula so her youngest daughter could attend high school and her son the university. She was the first owner of this newly built home, in residence with her two children and several boarders by 1909. The side-gabled Craftsman style cottage shares similarities with the Reed residence next door. Norwegian carpenters Andrew and Theodore Reed built that home and dozens of others in the neighborhood. They likely built this home as well. The two neighboring homes feature dominant front-facing dormers and horizontal clapboard cladding but are not identical. The Reed brothers’ characteristic wood moldings finish the doors and windows, but this house emphasizes the Craftsman style. Decorative triangular braces accent the gables, and the wide, overhanging, open eaves have exposed rafters.

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As Hellgate trading post grew into Missoula after 1860, farms sprouted north of the city center. The 1883 arrival of the Northern Pacific railroad brought residential construction to the Northside. The new neighborhood housed mainly railroad workers, many of them immigrants who came via the Midwest. Among them were Swedish-born John and Johana Swanson, who farmed in Wisconsin before buying this lot in 1897. They built this wood-frame, gable-front-and-wing house (with kitchen under separate roof in case of fire) that reflected the vernacular National Folk style. This style proliferated in the late nineteenth-century with the advent of balloon framing and the spread of railroads (which made lumber affordable). It proved popular on the Northside: larger versions often occupied corner lots. John and Johana also built a small alley house, presumably a rental, a common neighborhood feature. A railroad family, the Swansons raised seven children on John’s railway wages, two of whom also worked for the railroad. In 1918, eldest daughter Emma Strothman moved home from Spokane after her husband, also a railroader, died. Emma, a rural mail carrier, lived here until her death in 1969.

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Born of the 1883 arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad, the Northside grew with the railroad’s early twentieth-century expansion. Simple housing predominated in the working-class neighborhood, which contained few brick homes. This circa 1904 house, along with its neighbors, was an exception, probably because all three were built by A. C. Hollenbeck, Missoula’s leading brick manufacturer. Architectural detailing— pedimented gables, fluted porch columns, arched entries and window openings, and fish-mouth projections over gable windows—lent further distinction. This was, nonetheless, worker housing. Norma and Addison Darrow bought the property in 1911, when Addison worked for the railroad. At the time, it also contained a small two-story alley house, presumably a rental, a common feature on the working-class Northside. The Darrows and their four children owned the property for almost fifty years. At one time, both Addison and Norma worked for the Northern Pacific, as did at least one of their sons. Addison and sons also sometimes worked at the Anaconda Company’s Bonner mill, and the family occasionally lived near the mill and rented their Northside house.

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The block was sparsely developed when this Craftsman style bungalow took its place in the neighborhood circa 1921. A front-gabled roof, multi-paned Chicago style windows, wide overhanging eaves with exposed rafter tails, and square columns supporting the front porch are characteristic Craftsman style features. Fred E. Buck was the home’s first owner. He began his career as a public utilities engineer in Missoula in 1909 and eventually became Helena’s chief city engineer. Brice and Orell Thompson owned the property by 1924. Thompson was a fireman for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company at the lumber mill in Hamilton and later at Bonner. The Thompsons’ tenants at various times in the 1930s and 1940s included Pacific Life Insurance district manager Alfred Stephenson, prominent Missoula physician Dr. James J. Flynn, and grocer Curtis J. Austin. In the later 1940s, the Thompsons briefly occupied the home before it sold again. Inside, original built-in seating and a bookcase to either side of the fireplace express the cozy, family-oriented Craftsman ideal.

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