Polygamy Alley

Polygamy Alley is largely hidden behind Broadway Street buildings in this 1884 view, but it lies about along the green line. The carpenter's shop discussed below is almost certainly the one indicated near the west end of the alley. Click to enlarge.

By Richard I. Gibson

In early Butte—and into modern times in some places—the alleys were typically lined by businesses or homes with no other address than the alley. Many such alleys were simply referred to by the name of an adjacent street, such as South Main Alley (which evolved to China Alley) or East Granite Alley. Often enough, they were just called “the alley between Granite and Quartz Streets” or something similar. But from about 1884-1887, Butte boasted a uniquely named alley: Polygamy Alley.

It ran from Utah Street (today’s Hamilton) to Montana, between Granite and Broadway, just south of today’s Julian’s Piano Bar. Like many alleys, it was marked by a mixture of structures, including stables, sheds, outhouses, and the rears of a few large buildings including the Mt. Vernon Hotel, on Broadway. The 1884 hotel is occupied by the CCCS “Connections” building today *.

N.H. Ambrose ran a small boarding house in Polygamy Alley, probably about where the rear of the Water Company building is today. J.R. Anderson operated a canvas-covered carpenter’s shop near the modern back of the Carpenter’s Union Hall. That shop, where Anderson also lived, had become a more substantial frame structure with a basement by 1888, though it was still tiny, about 20 by 30 feet in size.

In 1885, two compositors, C.J. Lyons and J.F. Kline, probably typesetters for a printing company or newspaper, lived at the corner of Polygamy Alley and Utah (Hamilton), probably in a two-story rooming house that was the predecessor to Julian’s (Maley Block).

Mt. Vernon Hotel, 1979.

By 1888 buildings on Polygamy Alley were beginning to have addresses related to the streets to north or south. The carpenter’s shop became 120½ West Granite; a house on the south side of the alley became 69½ West Broadway, but there were still a handful of dwellings with alley-based numbers, at 109, 121, and 123, but by 1889 the name Polygamy Alley was no longer used. In the late 1880s and early 1890s the Butte fire department’s hose cart and 450-foot, 2½-inch hose were stored in the eastern part of this alley.

A handful of alley-facing businesses survived here in 1916, including an iron-clad carpenter’s shop (not the same one as Anderson had; this was a former stable, and stood just to the east of the new (1906) Carpenter’s Union Hall), a Chinese laundry, and a three-story lodging house due west of the Maley Block (Julian’s). That lodging house was still standing as recently as 1957, but is represented by a vacant lot today.

* I'm not 100% sure that the CCCS building dates to pre-1884. Same footprint, same number of stories, but it may be a somewhat newer, but pre-1900, replacement.

1884 Bird’s-Eye View and 1979 HABS/HAER photo of Mt. Vernon Hotel by Jet Lowe, both from Library of Congress. Thanks to Trish Pierson for discovering Polygamy Alley on a day when I was at the Archives.

Walkerville 1884

by Richard I. Gibson

from 1884 Bird's-Eye View, via Library of Congress. Annotations by Gibson.

Walkerville began early because of the nature of Butte’s minerals. The district is like an onion, with the core layers most copper rich, and the outer zones more silver rich. That’s why the Orphan Girl mine on the west side produced more than 7,000,000 ounces of silver before it closed in 1956 (but that's less than 1% of Butte’s silver) and why Walkerville grew up in the 1870s, before Butte’s real boom began.

Named for the Walker brothers of Salt Lake City who invested there, Walkerville held the famous Alice Mine (where Marcus Daly got his start), as well as massive associated mills. The Valdermere and Magna Charta Mines stood atop the hill to the east, and the Allie Brown, Lexington, Josephine, La Plata, and others bordered Walkerville on the south.

In 1884, much of this industrial complex was interconnected by a series of trams and railways, taking ore from smaller mines to central mills. Walkerville held one of McCune and Caplice’s largest general stores (on Main just north of Daly). The Rainbow Hotel, run by E.D. Sullivan, was on Main Street a bit north of the Lexington. The old Walkerville School on this illustration is not the Sherman School that still stands in Walkerville today.

Walkerville’s official population in 1880 was 444 (compare Butte at 3,364) but by 1890 it had quadrupled to 1,743 in the census, and nearby locations likely doubled that.

Telephones in 1880's Butte

By Richard I. Gibson

"TELco" is the 1884 second-floor office of
the Bell Telephone Co. on North Main.
85 is the Owsley Transfer Co. and Stable at Park and Main.
The building east of the Owsley stable was probably
a brothel (it was for sure by 1888.)

Butte boasts many firsts, but the telephone is not one of them. Montana’s first telephone appears to have been in Miles City, associated with Ft. Keogh (ca. 1877), and the first real exchange was in Helena in 1878. Butte’s telephone business apparently began February 21, 1882, when the phone line arrived, following (I think) the Utah and Northern Railroad line up from Salt Lake City.

By 1884 the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company shared an office with Western Union Telegraph in the Owsley Hall, at 260 Main. This location was about mid-block between Park and Broadway, on the east side, north of the Owsley Transfer Company Stables on the corner (later site of the Owsley Block/Medical Arts Bldg. that burned down in 1973). The two-story building also contained the Butte Hardware Co. on the first floor, with a warehouse and tin shop in the basement, and the communications companies shared the second floor with the short-lived Variety Theater; by 1888 that space was occupied by the Inter Mountain Printing Company.

The telephone and telegraph companies were “open day and night” and both were managed in 1884 by William Cairns, who lived on the south side of Porphyry Street between Main and Colorado. By 1889, Rocky Mountain Bell must have been a promising enterprise, attracting as President Andrew Jackson Davis (to become Montana’s first millionaire, thanks to his First National Bank) and superintendent Patrick Largey (later president of the State Savings Bank at Park and Main, where he was murdered in 1898 by a disgruntled victim of the 1895 warehouse explosion).

The phone company continued at the Main Street location until about 1897, when it moved to 50-52 East Broadway, its headquarters for many years thereafter. The only phone company in Butte’s early years to compete with Bell was the Montana Independent Phone Company (1907-1914), which erected a prestigious Greek Revival building on Granite Street as its office, surviving today as the Butte Water Company building. Businesses listed both phone numbers in their advertising, as evidently the two systems were not interconnected.

By 1891 phone numbers were into the 200’s. Grocers and transfer companies were most likely to have phones, but a lumber company, a confectioner, and the Montana Iron Works (tel. no. 81) also had connections. By 1910, there were more than 7000 phone numbers in Butte.

Thanks to Kathy Carlson for suggesting this post. The story of the telephone in Butte could clearly fill a book, so perhaps you’ll see a future post on this topic.

Image from 1884 Bird's-eye View of Butte, from Library of Congress.

Skating Rinks

Old Court House (left) with skating pavilion east (right) of it.

Roller skating was the rage in the U.S. in the 1880s, and as usual, Butte was at the leading edge.

In 1884 Butte had at least two “official” indoor skating rinks. The fancy one at the northeast corner of Granite and Alaska – directly across Alaska from today’s Silver Bow Club Office Building – was a huge, 2-story 170-foot-long barn-like pavilion with a cement floor, and was initially an ice-skating rink. It’s to the right of the old Court House in this image from the 1884 Bird’s-Eye View of Butte. It straddled a stream coming down from the vicinity of the Original Mine; the stream contained a “large amount of water in spring and winter” and went under the pavilion via stone arches. Dressing rooms and a storage shed stood outside the pavilion itself, right at the Alaska-Granite corner (you can see them in the snippet from the Bird’s-Eye View). At this time, Alaska Street north of Quartz (alongside today’s O’Rourke Building) was not a street, but was occupied by vegetable gardens with a cow corral to the east.

The second skating rink was on the north side of Park Street, where the Thomas Block (Garden of Beadin’, Main Stope Gallery, etc.) is today. This one-story structure was about 100’x100’ and included a basement.

In 1888 the Park Street rink was gone, replaced by the first Thomas Block of stores, including a butcher and sausage factory, dry goods shop, grocery, “gents furnishings” and clothing, and the Justice Court. The second floor was furnished rooms (or maybe a furniture warehouse).

The Granite Street pavilion (called Turner Hall) was being renovated in 1888, with plans to make it into an Opera House. The structure had been divided into two large spaces, with smaller shops (a saloon, a grocer, and a fruit store) occupying the Granite Street front. Alaska Street to the north was still unimproved, but it was becoming more like an urban street with several dwellings and a Chinese Laundry along it. The stream had been mostly filled in or covered and turned into a subsurface culvert.

In 1890 the Pavilion was still standing, but was divided into three large spaces: two for the Lyceum Theater, and the third for a gymnasium in the north end of the building. About half the building was still used as a skating rink in 1891; in 1900 the rear half was a livery stable. This building with its long history was torn down about 1915, as Uptown Butte’s last major building boom took off. The building there today dates to this era (I think) with a major re-build in 1947.

Butte was growing much too quickly to allocate large spaces in the central business district to skating rinks. Other rinks developed, including the one for ice skating at the corner of Montana and Front Streets. But the next time you pass the northeast corner of Granite and Alaska, remember the hundreds of kids and adults who enjoyed a skating party there over 125 years ago.

West Broadway 1884

from the 1884 Bird’s-Eye View via Library of Congress

By Richard I. Gibson

The south side of the first block of West Broadway includes some old buildings – but only one survives from 1884. The IOGT (Independent Order of Good Templars, an anti-alcohol fraternal organization that admitted women) Hall is the two-story building at right in the illustration here, and it’s the only remnant from that time still standing today. The third floor was added in 1891. Two doors down (off the right edge of the picture), the IOOF (Odd Fellows) hall had its foundation laid by September 1884, and it’s another long-term survivor in this block.

The IOGT hall included a stage in the basement and a dwelling on the first floor. It and the restaurant-saloon in mid-block and the prestigious bank at the corner of Main all had slate roofs, while all the others seen here had wooden shingles. Most of these buildings were “cloth lined,” meaning that their frame walls were insulated only by a lining of canvas. Hart & Lavelle’s livery stable had a basement with stone walls on two sides, and the bank had a stone basement.

The Donnell, Clark & Larabie bank occupied the first floor at the corner of Broadway and Main (where D.A. Davidson is today), with offices above and a barber and bathhouse in the basement where they had their own large boiler. The cornice was metal, probably tin. This building lasted until 1916, and its 1916 replacement was in turn replaced in the 1960s by the building there today.

Robert Donnell was expanding his Deer Lodge bank in 1877, with a new branch in Butte, where the 25x100 lot at the corner of Broadway and Main cost $1,400 on April 18, 1877. Donnell’s clerks, W.A. Clark and S.E. Larabie, took charge of the Butte branch and became the owners when another Donnell venture failed, in New York in 1884. Clark’s fortune began in this bank when he took some mine property, including the Travona, in lieu of loan payments, and an uninterested Larabie took a band of horses in exchange for his half interest in the mines.

Photo by Robert Edwards

Recent (January 2012) construction work from the parking lot at Quartz and Alaska, to Broadway (in front of the IOGT Hall), Park, and Galena streets focuses on a pre-1884 underground water-sewer line similar to the picture here by Robert Edwards. Before mining and building altered the landscape, that line was a flowing stream that came down the hill from the Centerville area, about where Alaska Street is today. South of Granite to Galena, most of that stream had been converted to an underground culvert by Summer 1884, but it was still a ditch or open sewer below Galena Street. North of Granite was a slightly different story—fodder for a later post.

Park your horse, sir?

Main Street liveries in 1884. Click to enlarge.

Stables were the garages of the 1800s, and prospering Butte had plenty. In 1884, in the area bounded by Jackson, Caledonia, Arizona, and Silver Streets at least 102 stables protected an unknown number of horses and other stock.

Three of the largest commercial livery stables stepped up Main Street, beginning with T.M. Carr’s Livery & Feed at the southeast corner of Main and Mercury. Carr had carriages available, and a large fenced feed corral adjacent to the stable accommodated plenty of horses. A block north, at the southeast corner of Galena and Main, Star Livery also provided carriages. That location was more or less in Butte’s Chinatown, which centered on Galena and Main in those days.

By far the largest space for a transportation provider was Owsley and Cowan’s Transfer Line Stables. Their stable and office complex stood at the northeast corner of Park and Main, later (1888-91) to become the huge Owsley Block (Butte Business College, Medical Arts Center—which burned in 1973 to leave the present parking lot). In 1884 this 140’x80’ conglomeration included an office, a 2-story lodging house, a cigar store, hay lofts above the stalls on the first floor and in the basement, and a carriage house with wash room and dressing rooms for drivers. The Owsley company probably also controlled the attached saloon and card room to the north.  A brothel was conveniently located just to the east on Park Street.

Look for more on William Owsley in future posts.

Image from Bird's-Eye View of Butte, 1884, from Library of Congress.

The Caplice Block

Caplice Block at lower left. Click to enlarge.

By Richard I. Gibson

The Caplice Block was one of the larger buildings in Butte in 1884. It stood at the southwest corner of Park and Montana, and it included a general store on the north side (facing Park) with tenements above on the second and third floors. The rest of the building was a dance hall and performance theater, with dressing rooms adjacent to the Montana Street entrance. The tenements extended above the dance hall as well. In 1888 the store was a liquor store, likely Caplice Commercial Company or its predecessor, John Caplice & Co.

A “French roof” suggests that the building was in Second Empire style, probably with an ornate upper section similar to today’s Finlen Hotel. This is also suggested by the appearance on the Bird’s-Eye Map view seen here (big building at lower left of general view above, and at the right edge of the street-level view of West Park below).

Caplice Block at right (building faces east). Click to enlarge.

Sutton’s New Theater occupied the Caplice Block by 1900, with an entrance on Park, although a store still occupied much of the north side. In 1916, the entire building was gone, replaced by four narrow 3-story stores, all opening on Park Street. Those are gone now, too.

John Caplice and his partner Alfred McCune were Utah businessmen who became active in Butte in the early 1880s. Caplice was born in Tipperary, Ireland in 1829 and was at Bannack in 1863. He died in 1903. In addition to the huge building at Park and Montana, the partners had a general merchandise establishment on Main Street north of Daly Street in Walkerville, several other stores around southwest Montana, and were involved in the initial construction of the Montana Central Railroad in 1886. The MCRR reached Butte November 10, 1888, and became part of the Great Northern in 1889. McCune lived for the most part in Salt Lake City, where his 1900 home is considered to be one of the finest mansions in the West.

John Caplice’s story is complex, including law suits involving the Schlitz Brewing Company. I had never heard of him before, but he’ll get another post or two in the future. McCune has his own Wikipedia entry, as does his house.

Bird's-Eye Views, 1884, published by J.J. Stoner, via Library of Congress.

Old Jail on Jackson Street, 1884

By Richard I. Gibson

Photo of Missoula Gulch 1885,
about 2 blocks west of Jackson St.

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps provide a wealth of information for historical research, often telling us the size and layout of buildings, the nature of their construction, what kind of business was there, and much more.

For example, poring over the 1884 Sanborn for Butte I made the discovery (surprising to me, anyway) that there was a mine at the intersection of West Mercury and Jackson Streets. Silver Bow Mining Company’s Stephens Mine had a 2-story hoist engine room with a steam pump and a fifty-foot 1½-inch hose. Two boilers generated 80 horsepower, and an attached carpenter shop was apparently reached by a ladder from Jackson Street. Jackson Street was effectively the west edge of town and is labeled “Arbitrary” on the map. A nearby blacksmith’s operation stood near the center of the present-day intersection, with the mine complex and shaft in Mercury Street, along the south side, just west of Jackson. The mine buildings totaled about 70’x70’ and there was also an 80-foot-long wood pile located at what is now the northwest corner of the Jackson-Mercury intersection.

From Bird's-Eye View of Butte, 1884. Click to enlarge.

The mine was still active in 1888 but the structures there burned down in 1890 and the mine was apparently never reopened.

The Silver Bow Mining Company was involved in a far-reaching law suit which effectively ruled that mining (subsurface) claims trump surface ownership. It is not clear whether the mine at Mercury and Jackson figured in the case, but it was a suit between surface owners in the Butte Townsite and the Silver Bow Mining Company (reported in Montana, its story and biography, by Tom Stout, published 1921 by American Historical Society, p. 427).
Another tidbit from this neighborhood (such as it was) is the location of the “Old Jail” in the middle of the block along Jackson between West Park and West Galena. The large building on the west side of the street measured about 50’x25’ and had a fenced jail yard, two small outbuildings, and a stable. The “new” jail would be the one located in the city hall that had just been erected in 1884 (today’s Jail House Coffee). The jail in the basement of the second city hall (24 E. Broadway) was the third jail, built and in use in 1890.

Note: I’m not including an illustration from the map because the Sanborn folks claim copyright to their online versions of the maps. While one might make the case that something created in 1884 is out of copyright, I’m honoring their claim based on the additional creativity they have in the online versions. 

Missoula Gulch photo from A Brief History of Butte (Freeman, 1900), digitized by Butte Public Library and part of Montana Memory Project.