The Southside’s wide variety of home styles stems from three different building booms. Marcus Daly built large Queen Anne style homes for Anaconda Company managers in the 1890s. Between 1905 and 1916 during the apple boom, middle-class residents built handsome Craftsman and Colonial style residences. Then, after Rocky Mountain Laboratory expanded in 1927 and federal home ownership programs arrived in the 1930s, Picturesque Revival and Cape Cod cottages filled the remaining vacant lots. Hotel and saloon owners William P. and Catherine O'Brien owned this lot from 1909 to 1933. They lived in a Queen Anne cottage two doors north but left the lot undeveloped. Fred and Hazel Vallance built this Cape Cod style home in 1936. The exterior brick chimney and shed roof dormer are stylistic hallmarks. Fred, a career mail carrier, and Hazel shared the home with their daughter, two laboratory assistants, and a pharmacist. Fred contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in 1940, but a dose of the vaccine—created nearby at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory—saved his life. He retired in 1945, and he and Hazel moved to Stevensville in 1946.
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