Before his death in 1896, pioneering Jewish businessman William Weinstein owned many lots, including this one, in Philipsburg. By 1902, his daughter Alice Weinstein Hannah owned the property and the one-story wooden dwelling that stood on the site, which she undoubtedly rented to local miners and their families. She sold the home in 1913 to Missoula resident Leanorah Damuth. Damuth lost the property for back taxes in 1923, and in 1927 Louada Smith purchased the lots and all improvements for $248.75. A divorced mother of four, Louada married miner John Flascher the following year. Soon thereafter, the family built this one-and-one-half-story, gable-front home, valued in 1930 at $2,400. The home originally sported full-width front and rear porches, both of which were later enclosed.
]]>This magnificent Classical Revival school building originally served both elementary and secondary students. Financed by a $30,000 bond, it was dedicated in 1896 just three years after Philipsburg became the seat of Granite County. Two hundred students attended the first year. The prominent architectural firm of Bell and Kent designed the school; their work also includes the original Montana state capitol. The four-story square tower with its large, arched granite entrance dominates the brick and granite building. The Classical Revival style can also be seen in the roof’s closed gabled ends, which form triangular pediments decorated with modillions and circular windows. After a new Philipsburg high school was constructed in 1912, this school housed only elementary classes. Fifteen years later, four additional classrooms and a gymnasium were added to the rear.
]]>The Granite County Jail was constructed in 1896, three years after Granite County was carved from two adjacent counties and Philipsburg made the county seat. The town served as hub to extensive area mining and, later, ranching. The jail was the first major public building constructed for county use, reflecting early desire for law and order. This stately building contains jail space, the sheriff’s office, and the sheriff’s residence. It was constructed for an estimated $8,000 using features from several architectural styles. The jail’s dominant feature is a medieval tower above the arched portico. Its bricked-over windows, intriguingly, were part of the original creation. The dark brick was locally fired and the rough-cut granite locally quarried. Renovated successfully to current standards, this remains one of Montana’s oldest jails still serving its original function.
]]>Charles A. and Frank J. Wilson, brothers from Wisconsin, built and established their businesses in this building by 1888. The building originally housed a furniture store on one side, a feed store on the other, and a miners’ boarding house/living quarters upstairs. Later in the 1890s, the businesses changed to hardware and groceries while the boarding house continued to operate. Inside, a hand-over-hand hoist that is still in use and tongue-and-groove maple flooring confirm the success of the brothers’ businesses. Although the building has been remodeled several times and the interior stairs moved to the outside, rehabilitation of the façade has restored the exterior to its 1887 appearance.
]]>Around the mountain from the mining camp of Cable in 1866 came Polish-born merchant William Weinstein with a wagon-load of goods to sell. He became Philipsburg’s first general merchant, constructing the eastern half of this building in the late 1870s or early 1880s to house his business. Ike Sparey located his restaurant and hotel in the western half, completed circa 1887. The structure has since served as a bank, a mortuary, and since 1950 as mining company offices for the current owner, the Taylor-Knapp Company. Second-story balconies, ornamental brickwork, and battlements complement this well-preserved example of 1880s commercial architecture.
]]>Prominent Missoula architect A. J. Gibson designed and built this two-story commercial building in 1905. The fine design includes a metal modillioned cornice and panels with a full height glass storefront and polished granite skirt below. The Walker Company operated stores in both Philipsburg and nearby Granite, selling dry goods and hardware. The Golden Rule handled similar merchandise at this location in the 1920s, and Philipsburg Hardware carried on the same tradition beginning in 1932.
]]>The cornerstone for St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church was laid in 1887. Dedicated September 15, 1890, this modest but rather sophisticated structure was one of Philipsburg’s early churches. Choice of brick and prolonged construction reveal the generosity and persistence of its congregation. The original building with its furnishings cost a total of $3,589.94. When lightning destroyed the bell tower, an entry vestibule and new tower were later constructed in conjunction with the addition west of the sanctuary.
]]>In January 1889, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church opened its doors to hold one of the first services in a church in Philipsburg. Placed within the cornerstone the previous year were a Bible, some coins, names of donors, and a copy of the Philipsburg Mail. The one-story wood-frame building provides an excellent example of a simple pioneer church. Except for the Gothic tracery over the entrance, the building resembles schoolhouse design of the period.
]]>A beautifully embellished pedimented gable and open porch with spindled balustrade, turned columns, and decorative details highlight this splendid two-and-one-half-story Queen Anne style residence of salmon-colored brick. Mary Schuh, a longtime pioneer homesteader and reputedly the first white woman to settle locally in nearby Cable, owned the property in 1894. The home was built in the mid-1890s. Mary’s daughter and son-in-law, Emma and Frank Nowak, raised their children here and sold the home shortly after Mary’s death in 1918. New cedar roof shingling of the original type and restoration of the unusual handcut metal ridge trim atop the roof return this charming home to its nineteenth-century likeness.
]]>First known as the Hyde Block, this building was constructed by banker Joseph Hyde and his wife, Mary, in 1888. It housed the First National Bank until the silver crash of 1893. In 1904, Frank Sayrs purchased the building and it has since held a number of businesses including a tailor’s shop, drug stores, and a recreation center. The fine design of this two-story commercial structure features a chamfered, or beveled, corner with a modillioned metal cornice and pediment.
]]>One of a network of Jewish merchants who supplied miners in the Rocky Mountain West, nineteen-year-old Benjamin Pizer arrived in Helena from Poland with his wife Jessie Silverman and their newborn son David in 1869. With limited capital, he purchased fifty pounds of dry goods, which he peddled to area miners. After seven years, he bought a wagon and expanded his territory. In 1878, he purchased a dry goods business in Philipsburg. A building boom fueled by Philipsburg-area silver mining and the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad prompted Pizer to invest in this one-story brick vernacular style building in 1887. Pizer sold furniture, notions, and tobacco from this shop, while a saloon operated on the building’s east side. Well integrated into the Philipsburg community, Pizer served as a Republican county commissioner and was a member of both the Knights of Pythias and the Oddfellows. A founding member of the Helena Hebrew Benevolent Society, Pizer also retained ties to Helena, where the family returned in 1896. He died there in 1921 and was buried in the Home of Peace Jewish cemetery.
]]>During the 1880s masonry structures began to replace wood-framed buildings from the mining camp days to form the present town. George H. Harn, who at that time ran one of two local brickyards, probably built this fine residence with his own bricks. James Patten Sr. came to Philipsburg from Illinois and purchased the home from Harn in 1887. Patten was a prominent businessman involved in the operation of the nearby Trout and Sweet Home Mines. The one-and-one-half-story home features a hipped roof, bay window with wood paneled spandrels, and porches with slender turned columns, decorative brackets, spindled balustrades, and scrolled friezes.
]]>Colonel J. W. Morse built Morse Hall in 1887. This elaborately detailed public lecture hall also served as county courthouse after 1893, as well as an opera house, town hall, library, and general community center. Its splendid second-story dance floor was the scene of many gala community dances as well as basketball games. The pressed metal cornice, hood moldings, and full storefront supported by cast-iron columns make this building a fine example of commercial vernacular architecture.
]]>The excellent design and spacious interior of this two-story commercial building represents Philipsburg’s prosperity and substantial population during the 1890s. Constructed for J. K. Merrill and Sons between 1892 and 1894, Freyschlag, Huffman and Company took this location for its general merchandise emporium in 1893. Dry goods, clothing, groceries, hardware, and wholesale liquors were displayed in the 12,000 feet of floor space. By 1897, it had become BiMetallic Mining’s company store. A three-bay façade and second-story pressed metal colonnade visually reinforce the structure’s proportions.
]]>Prominent businessman Angus A. McDonald constructed this two-story masonry theater in 1891. A metal-covered stage loft rises above the roof as evidence of the structure’s historic function. Beneath the south end were dressing rooms for the traveling entertainers that played the generous stage. Elaborate backdrops were painted by Montana artist Edgar S. Paxson. The advent of moving pictures with sound brought some interior changes in the 1930s, but a magician’s trap door at center stage is still in place. Renamed the Granada Theatre in 1919, it is Montana’s oldest operating theater.
]]>Meetings in Philipsburg of Flint Creek Lodge No. 11 date back to 1867. This structure, built in 1911, provided a permanent home for the community-oriented fraternal organization. Chambers for lodge meetings occupy the entire top floor. The ground floor originally housed the Philipsburg State Bank, and the outside entry to the bank’s old vault still remains intact. A chamfered corner complemented by visual emphasis on horizontal lines of banded masonry reflect the period.
]]>A second-story walkway originally connected this three-story masonry building with the Kaiser House, affording the busy establishment more boarding rooms. Constructed circa 1890, its gabled dormers in a metal mansard roof present an appearance unusual to the architecture of Philipsburg. George A. Stephens purchased the hotel in 1908, and thereafter it was known as the Stephens Hotel. It featured a large parlor and rooms for traveling salesmen who brought trunks of sample wares in pursuit of lucrative business.
]]>Michael Kaiser, founder of the Philipsburg Water Company, built this grand hotel in 1881. One of Philipsburg’s oldest masonry structures, the original hotel boasted a wraparound porch extending halfway around the building. Second-story French doors, matching windows below, and four Norman arched double doors with fan transoms speak to its excellent design. A fine bar, billiard room, and T-bone steaks for 50 cents made the Kaiser House a place applauded by travelers and residents alike.
]]>Most of Philipsburg’s original wooden commercial structures were later rebuilt of brick, but this last-remaining frame boardinghouse escaped such a fate. The two-and-one-half-story establishment, built in 1880, was run by Honora Hynes until the silver crash of 1893 and then by the McGurk family until 1930. Spacious parlors, dining room, and upstairs sleeping rooms offered residents comfortable, home-like quarters. The structure’s false-front style was popular in small-town western America and was used to make buildings appear more substantial.
]]>Built circa 1887, Lutey’s Grocery and the Barrett and Jacky Harness Shop originally shared occupancy of this one-story commercial building. By the 1890s, Valentine Jacky shared the building with C. T. Huffman, who supplied groceries to Philipsburg and the nearby town of Granite. C. T. and A. S. Huffman eventually expanded their store into both sides of the building. Operated by A. S. Huffman’s sons until the 1970s, the business was the state’s oldest family-owned grocery. Meticulous reconstruction of the 1890s façade and restoration of the tin-ceilinged interior was completed in 1992-1993 by owner Dale Siegford and woodwright Barry Carnahan.
]]>The first permanent home for Granite County offices was completed in 1913. Prominent Montana architects John Link and Charles Haire designed the building. Its cut stonework is, appropriately, made of Montana granite. Granite County commissioners paid the Gagnon and Company construction firm $49,000 for completion of this elegant brick county courthouse. Look for the inscription “Granite Co.” in the keystone above the entry arch.
]]>Reverend Milton Cook organized Philipsburg’s first Presbyterian congregation in 1877 and Reverend George Edwards came from Missoula to preach once a month. But it was not until 1891 that Reverend Samuel Wishard established a permanent Presbyterian congregation in Philipsburg. Services and Sunday school were held in the schoolhouse until summer 1893 when the present building welcomed its first worshippers. An early cold snap, however, forced the congregation to move services to the Methodist Church until heating stoves could be installed. The building’s unusual hexagonal copper dome and intricate scrollwork make its steeple the most distinctive among Philipsburg’s churches. A Gothic window with tracery, lancet openings, and a round window embellish the simple frame façade. Fondly known as the "White Church," the building takes its place along “church row” on the north side of Broadway. The local watering holes are all on the opposite side of the street, maintaining the historic separation of secular and spiritual. Presbyterians held services here until 1990 when they joined with the Methodists to share their facility.
]]>In the 1880s and 1890s, masonry structures gradually replaced the frame buildings left from Philipsburg’s mining camp days. Doe and Hoyer constructed this commercial brick building in 1887. Modini’s Grand Hotel and Restaurant was located in the west half. M. E. Doe and his sons owned and managed the drug store on the east half of the ground floor until 1969. Doe’s Drug Store even sold the town’s first gasoline, hand pumped from barrels out front.
]]>Brothers Morris and Humphrey Courtney built this multi-purpose building in 1918 with profits from manganese mining acquired during World War I. The building speaks to the coming of the automobile as the basement housed the Granite County Garage and the first floor was a dealership and showroom for Overland automobiles. The wide door in the center made the interior showroom accessible. The upper two floors accommodated offices and hotel rooms, often occupied by schoolteachers.
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