Missoula Downtown Historic District
In 1865, Christopher Higgins, Francis Worden, and David Pattee constructed grist and lumber mills near where the Mullan Road (now Front Street) intersected with present day Higgins Avenue. Worden’s 1874 Carpenter Gothic home on East Pine, once a quiet residential street, commemorates this early period. Arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1883 brought new growth. Soon Western Commercial style hotels and business blocks lined Missoula’s streets, including the brick-paved Railroad Street. Noteworthy architect-designed buildings from the period included the Tudor style Missoula Hotel, the Richardsonian Romanesque style Higgins Block, and the eclectic expansion of the Missoula Mercantile (originally constructed in 1877). The economic Panic of 1893 stilled Missoula’s development. After 1900, economic recovery fostered a new building boom, especially after the 1908 arrival of the Milwaukee Road, Missoula’s second railway. High style façades topped with elaborate cornices signified the city’s coming of age. Classical civic buildings from the era include the A. J. Gibson-designed 1903 Carnegie Library and 1910 County Courthouse. Architects of statewide and regional note designed other landmark buildings within the district, including the 1910 neoclassical Independent Telephone Company, the 1921 Sullivanesque Wilma Theater, the 1937 Art Deco Zip Auto Building, and the 1941 Moderne Florence Hotel. Construction slowed during the Great Depression, but two large public works projects—the 1936 Forest Service Regional Headquarters and a 1937 addition to Missoula’s Federal Building and Courthouse—demonstrated the federal government’s importance to Missoula’s economy. The preservation of these and almost 400 other buildings in the fifty-two block district record Missoula’s history on its streets.
Missoula Carnegie Public Library
Missoula Downtown Historic District
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…
View Place Show on Map
Free Speech Corner
Missoula Downtown Historic District
In autumn 1909, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Jack Jones arrived in Missoula, soon followed by their comrade, Frank Little. After renting space for a union hall, they took to the streets, determined to spread “the glad tidings of a great revolutionary…
View Place Show on Map
BPOE Lodge #383, Missoula
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the U.S.A., Hell Gate Lodge #383, has offered conviviality, community service, and social support since its founding in 1898. In 1911 lodge members contracted with Montana’s premier architectural firm of Link and Haire to design this Neoclassical style…
View Place Show on Map
The Palace Hotel
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Missoula’s first commercial district developed southwest of the Northern Pacific Railroad depot in the 1880s and 1890s. But as the town blossomed, a new central business district began to take shape. The Palace Hotel, constructed at what was then the corner of West Cedar and Stevens (now Broadway…
View Place Show on Map
Missoula Mercantile Warehouse
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Established in 1866 under the name Bonner and Welch, the Missoula Mercantile Company quickly grew into an economic and political powerhouse. In 1890, the company handled about 60 percent of the city’s retail trade, worth $1.5 million. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was the largest…
View Place Show on Map
Missoula County Courthouse
Missoula Downtown Historic District
The Neoclassical style sandstone Missoula County Courthouse was designed by prominent local architect A. J. Gibson, and erected 1908-1910. Inside the copper-domed clock tower hangs a two-ton bell, and a notable interior decoration is the series of eight historical murals for the main, south…
View Place Show on Map
Mrs. Lydia McCaffery's Furnished Rooms
Missoula Downtown Historic District
At the turn of the century, social critics saw apartment living as morally suspect. Instead, single working men and women who could not stay with their families typically lived in rooming or boardinghouses, where housekeepers ostensibly kept an eye on their behavior. Housekeepers were typically…
View Place Show on Map
Reid Residence
Missoula Downtown Historic District
William and Eliza Reid built this elegant home around 1890. Primarily used as a rental, the house began as a much simpler ell-shaped residence. Widow Jennie Thompson, who rented the home in 1900, lived here with her three grown children, one of whom worked as a photographer. A remodel between 1902…
View Place Show on Map
John S. Johnston House
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Missoula blossomed at the turn of the twentieth century as railroad transportation facilities expanded, securing the town’s prominence as a trade, manufacturing, and lumbering center for western Montana. As Missoula gained importance, this residential area enjoyed increased status as a fashionable…
View Place Show on Map
Studebaker Building
Missoula Downtown Historic District
As the automobile gained popularity in the 1910s, stables and garages existed side by side until motor travel prevailed over horses in the 1920s. The succession of businesses at this address documents the transition that must have been hard on old-timers like Joseph P. Nagle, who first advertised…
View Place Show on Map
St. Francis Xavier Church
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Jesuits arrived in the Missoula Valley in 1841 en route to the Bitterroot, where they established the first Catholic mission in the Rocky Mountains. In 1873, they opened a chapel in Missoula, building the first St. Francis Xavier Church in 1881. Father Diomedi, S.J.—who oversaw many major building…
View Place Show on Map
Missoula Laundry Company
Missoula Downtown Historic District
In 1915, Nettie and Joseph Hagen expanded their Model Laundry Company by purchasing the Missoula Laundry Company and moving their business into the newly completed west section of this building. That original structure and its later additions represent three different commercial architectural…
View Place Show on Map
Lucy Building
Missoula Downtown Historic District
John M. Lucy’s furniture store and undertaking business was twenty years old when he had this building constructed for it in 1909. By then, the Irish immigrant (who had arrived in Montana as a workhand building the final leg of the Northern Pacific Railroad) had been joined in business by his sons…
View Place Show on Map
Lenox Flats
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Poised on the brink of the homesteading boom, Missoula prospered at the turn of the twentieth century with signs of urban growth evident in the hotels and row houses that began to line this busy corridor. Local contractor/architect Eugene Morin purchased this property in 1904 and designed the…
View Place Show on Map
Missoula Labor Temple
Missoula Downtown Historic District
In 1896, a Union Hall was constructed here on property donated by copper magnate Marcus Daly. That building served as local headquarters for unions affiliated with Federal Union Local 83, the precursor of the building trade unions that later organized into separate crafts. When first completed, the…
View Place Show on Map
Headquarters Building and Daily Company Annex
Missoula Downtown Historic District
An exuberant ambassador of the late nineteenth century and its more Spartan complement comprise this architectural duet, whose history spans Missoula’s development. The older and more impressive Headquarters Building, designed by architect John Larkin for Mitchell and Bennett in 1888, was…
View Place Show on Map
Hammond Arcade
Missoula Downtown Historic District
The Hammond Arcade Building is an outstanding example of Art Deco commercial architecture, with its polychrome brick work, concrete column construction, and original wraparound metal awning. Its interior arcade, which never has been remodeled, is unusual for the period. On this site had stood…
View Place Show on Map
Gleim Building II
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Mary Gleim, one of Missoula’s most colorful characters, built this “female boarding house” at the heart of the red light district between 1893 and 1902. It operated as a brothel until progressive reforms closed the district in 1916. The building later became an automobile repair shop. Mary owned…
View Place Show on Map
Gleim Building
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Built in 1893, this is an excellent example of vernacular adaptation of Romanesque architecture, with its arched windows, checkerboard banding, and rusticated granite sills. Today the building has been restored on its façade and east and west sides to the original appearance. Historically, the…
View Place Show on Map
Florence Hotel
Missoula Downtown Historic District
The original Florence Hotel, built on this site in 1888, offered weary railway travelers and settlers a comfortable night’s lodging. When it burned in 1913, the Florence was rebuilt as a major 106-room hostelry and was a longtime regional gathering place until it, too, was destroyed by fire in…
View Place Show on Map
Dixon-Duncan Block
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Two Missoula attorneys on opposing sides of the political arena teamed up to construct this attractive commercial building in 1897. Republican Joseph Dixon, who later became Governor of Montana (1921-1925), began his political career as Missoula County attorney in 1894. He returned to practice law…
View Place Show on Map
Brunswick Hotel
Missoula Downtown Historic District
The Brunswick Hotel, built 1890-1891, is an excellent example of vernacular commercial architecture, with a Queen Anne emphasis. It is one of Missoula’s oldest remaining hotels associated with the beginning of the railroad era here, when hotels arose to serve rail workers and passengers. The…
View Place Show on Map
The Atlantic Hotel
Missoula Downtown Historic District
The construction of the Milwaukee Road and the reconstruction of the Northern Pacific Railroad through Missoula sparked a second railroad-era building boom in the early twentieth century. The need for accommodations for both railroad workers and passengers occasioned the construction of several…
View Place Show on Map
Newton Residence
Missoula Downtown Historic District
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.…
View Place Show on Map
Apartment Building
Missoula Downtown Historic District
Missoula boasted twenty-six manufacturing enterprises by 1909, including such diverse production as candy, bricks, gas, marble, and meat products. By 1910, the Northern Pacific Railroad shops employed over three hundred workers and the town’s role as a major urban center was secure. Although the…
View Place Show on Map