Having raised $350 to begin construction, the Scandinavian Methodists laid the cornerstone of their new church on December 20, 1895. The city had donated the lot, and farmer Robert Nordtome served as architect and lead carpenter. The design included a steeple in the northwest corner (since removed); narrow, pointed windows with wooden tracery; and an attached one-and-one-half-story residence. Contractor Lars Johnson and other Scandinavian farmers, carpenters, and tradesmen donated their labor. The congregation formally dedicated the church in 1905, though they began meeting here much earlier. Until 1910, wood stoves provided heat and oil lamps illuminated the interior. Not everyone supported the church’s construction. A letter to the editor of The Interlake asserted in 1896 that the Methodists were taking needed resources from the Scandinavian Lutheran church. “Most Scandinavians are Lutheran … [and] there were hardly enough people to build one church, to say nothing of two,” according to the letter writer. He particularly objected to the fact that congregation leaders were fundraising as “the Scandinavian church … when they positively know that it is not, and never will be, a church for the majority of the Scandinavian people.” Despite the letter writer’s fears, both churches—constructed within two blocks of each other—served Kalispell’s Scandinavian community for decades. As one of four Montana churches built by the Methodist’s Norwegian-Danish Conference, the church offered services in Norwegian for over forty years. Originally a gathering spot to preserve culture and language as well as to share faith, it became the English-speaking Westside Methodist Church in 1939.
]]>After working as a chauffeur for the entrepreneurial Conrad family of Kalispell, Ray E. Taylor moved to Whitefish in the 1920s and operated a bus service between Whitefish and Kalispell for many years. Taylor demonstrated great skill as a vernacular architect and craftsman in this house especially, and in several other Whitefish buildings. He designed “The Castle,” as this home came to be called during construction, and did most of the work himself from 1929 to 1931. The stone work, including interior fireplaces and the exterior skirting, was done by local stone mason C. C. McArthur, a master at his trade, utilizing locally collected stone. Taylor’s design is predominantly Tudor Revival styling, with massive chimneys, steeply pitched roof and cross gables, large end-wall parapets, and crenellated dormers. To support the extensive stone work of the main and upper floor fireplaces and the three-story chimney tower, Taylor ingeniously used a pair of railroad tracks running more than nineteen feet under the tower. The builder lived here only six years, using the first floor and renting the second, before selling the house to Dr. John B. Simons.
]]>Not long after the Great Northern Railway announced its plans for a division point in Whitefish, Presbyterian missionary E. M. Ellis and Kalispell minister Alexander Pringle traveled by bicycle and rowboat to visit the site. Soon after, Reverend Pringle canvassed logging and railroad camps for donations of cash and labor to construct a sanctuary. By December 1903, Whitefish had its first church. The First Presbyterian Church moved several times in the early years. By 1919, it had once again outgrown its building; to accommodate congregants, the church held services in the Masonic Lodge while planning a new house of worship. Under direction of physician and active church member W. W. Taylor, the building committee devised detailed drawings, which the Spokane architectural firm Rigg and Vantyne modified only slightly. The building committee chose a Romanesque Revival style design, considered less ostentatious and more appropriate for a Protestant church than the competing Gothic tradition. Romanesque Revival churches featured masonry construction, heavily arched windows, bands of stylized decoration, and towers—in this case a Norman style square tower that serves as the building’s main entrance. The one-story building featured a large daylight basement with a high ceiling, designed to provide clearance for a full-sized basketball court. Community members donated the large art glass windows ornamenting the sanctuary. Among them are two purchased by Japanese railroad workers for $700 in honor of churchwoman Elizabeth Peck, who taught the men English. A tribute to Peck, the windows also commemorate Whitefish’s once-thriving Japanese community and the church’s long history of community service.
]]>Whitefish served as a division point for the Great Northern Railway from its founding in 1904 until 1955. In 1925, one railroader called it “the most distinctively railroad town on the whole Great Northern system.” The second floor of this 1928 Tudor style building, designed by railroad architect Thomas McMahon, housed the railway’s division offices. Serving as a hub for passenger and freight transportation, the first floor housed the yard office, freight and baggage rooms, warm room, ticket office, general waiting room, telegraph office, men’s smoking room, and ladies’ rest room. Competition from automobiles and trucks had already begun to decrease railroad traffic, so not many depots were built in the 1920s, the height of Tudor popularity; thus Tudor style depots are rare. This depot’s Tudor features include its high pointed roof, stucco and decorative half timbering above clapboard, and multiple groups of tall, narrow windows. Its decoratively carved brackets and rafter tails and second-floor balconies echo similar detailing at Glacier National Park chalets, visually connecting Whitefish to Glacier, a tourist destination widely promoted by the railroad. In the 1980s, Whitefish preservationists worked to preserve this magnificent building, which still serves as a passenger and freight depot. Railroad depots are one of the few types of buildings for which the back (facing the town) is as important as the front (facing the tracks). The stylish façades on both front and back of the Whitefish Depot continue to welcome travelers and reflect the town’s railroad history.
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