Granite and Main, 1890-91

by Richard I. Gibson

Butte was booming in 1890, with a surging population of at least 23,000, up from about 4,000 a decade earlier. New buildings by the score, together with the street cars and other traffic, made the corner of Granite and Main a busy place as the illustration by C. Winsor, above, shows.

Many of the buildings in this view survive. Most of the west side of the 100 block of North Main below Granite is buildings dating to before 1884, damaged but not destroyed by a devastating fire in 1889. The corner building, D.J. Hennessey’s three-story mercantile, was his third location. He began his business a ways down Main, above Broadway, but by 1889 was leasing space in the 2-story O’Rourke building on the corner. It burned down in the 1889 fire, and was replaced within a year by the 3-story structure in the image above, which survives to this day. The Hennessey Building we know today, across the street, was Hennessey’s 4th location. It’s hard to see in the image, but the site of today’s Hennessey is an almost vacant lot in the drawing. The Centennial Hotel that stood there had burned down in 1888, and in 1891 the corner was occupied by five little shacks, each measuring about 10 feet by 20 feet. They housed a newsstand, a tailor, a fruit seller, a clothier, and a meat market.

Connell’s store, where Hennessey got his start in Butte, is at the far right in the upper image, left in lower image. Although the 5-story corner tower is gone, it’s my understanding that the heart of the present-day NorthWestern Energy building there is still this original building. The Marchesseau and Valiton Block (better known as the Beaver Block) at far left (right in lower image) is gone, lost to demolition and fire in 1968.

For much more information about Daniel Hennessey, see Zena Beth McGlashan’s book, Buried in Butte. Image from “A general view of Butte,” drawn by C. Winsor, circa 1891 (its source, the Montana Memory Project, says this is 1887, but it cannot be earlier than 1890).

Butte Public Bath House

By Richard I. Gibson

In 1884, the northwest corner of Arizona and Granite was occupied by the channel of the stream that curved south out of Dublin Gulch, behind the Butte Brewery and on eventually to Silver Bow Creek. Arizona Street existed in concept, but north of Broadway it was undefined.

By 1888, the “stream” was little more than a ditch, labeled “open sewer,” and a berm along its eastern side held a dirt path that crossed the northwest corner of the Granite-Arizona intersection. The Public School (later Washington Jr. High) was a half-block to the east. In 1900, the ditch was gone, pretty much covered over, but there was nothing around that corner other than some small tenements on the east side of Arizona north of Granite.

About 1905-06, the first and probably only building to stand on the northwest corner was erected. It was built as a gymnasium and natatorium (swimming pool). The address was 125 E. Granite. The Butte Brewery was just off to the northwest; the Dorothy Apartments were down Granite at Wyoming, New homes were popping up on Granite and Quartz east of Arizona. The photo above is probably from about 1911, but it could be as early as 1907. You can see the tall towers of the Butte Brewery at left center, and the hoist house in the right background is the Washoe Mine, which had closed down before 1900.

I’m not certain who had the building built – was it truly “public baths,” as indicated in the photo caption? Or was it a place where the public could use the water supply? The “plunge,” which I take to mean the swimming pool, was 20 feet by 50 feet. It’s not clear where in the building it was located, but by about 1910, the second floor held a gymnasium and the plunge was “not used.”

300 block of North Main in 1942. Photo by John Vachon.
(FSA photo from Library of Congress)

In October 1910 the gymnasium was taken over by Prof. Jerry McCarthy for the Olympic Athletic Club. The club had been meeting at 307 North Main, today the parking lot east of the Archives. 307 North Main became the long-time home of National Market.

Jerry McCarthy, who lived at 614 West Park, made a living running the Athletic Club and teaching amateur sports like boxing. When the club moved into the new gym at Granite and Arizona in 1910, doubling the size of the space available, 400 club members turned out for the grand opening on October 18. McCarthy’s pupils Young Mooney and Kid Forbes were matched in a lightweight boxing exhibition, as were Tally Johns (a miner at the Minnie Healey) and Harry Graves. Both bouts ended in a draw. The headliners in the boxing show were Maurice Thompson vs. Jack Clark from Calgary, but that was yet another draw, as determined by referee McCarthy.

Butte’s champion wrestler Tim Harrington defeated challenger Davey two falls to one. McCarthy himself put on a show of bag-punching and displayed to the “audience what good rope skipping really is.”

By 1916, this building had been taken over by the Y.M.A. Club – the Young Men’s Association. The Y.M.A. started a successful lyceum course here. Lyceums were educational courses aimed mainly at adults, with programs of lectures, entertainments, debates, and classes.

The lyceum movement in America peaked in the late 19th century but was still active well into the 1920s. The Butte lyceum, led by one Tom Davis and the Y.M.A., became one of the most successful lyceum programs in America in 1916, even though they started in the building at 125 East Granite, “the most pathetic appeal for an association building I ever saw,” as reported by The Lyceum Magazine. The young men were joined by Guy Lewis, a Lutey’s West Store manager, who helped with organization. They had their own Butte newspaper, the Association Herald, “A Community Builder, For a Better Butte.”

Y.M.A. members were paid a 10% commission on ticket sales (tickets cost 25¢ - or season tickets for 8 shows at $2.00) as an incentive – and it apparently worked. Even The Lyceum Magazine was surprised that they managed to pack the 1100-seat Broadway theater in Butte with an audience who paid to hear a lecture. Their entire program series in October 1917 had receipts of $3200. The first program brought the nationally-known Oxford Company to Butte. They put on a performance of light opera, drama, and singing.

In 1917, the Y.M.A. merged with the Y.M.C.A. I do not know when the gymnasium building was lost, but it was before 1928. The corner has been a vacant lot or parking lot since then.

The photo below shows this corner about 1900 (from, A Brief History of Butte, by Harry Freeman, 1901), annotated to indicate streets, the Dorothy Block at Granite and Wyoming, and the red circle is the corner in this post, Arizona and Granite, a vacant lot in 1900.

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Sources:

The Oxford Company photo from University of Iowa

Butte YMA newspaper and advertisements from The Lyceum Magazine, October 1916

Photo of 125 E. Granite (“Public Baths”) from Annual Reports of the City Officers, City of Butte, fiscal years 1906-1911, digitized by Butte Public Library.

Additional information from Sanborn Maps, City Directories.

The Mikado Dining Hall

by Richard I. Gibson

Annie and Katie Nesbitt, sisters, opened the Mikado Dining Hall on October 1, 1894, in the Barnard Block at 15 West Granite Street. They had been in the restaurant business for at least a few years—in 1892 Annie managed and Katie was a waitress at a café at 45 West Granite. Prior to that, they were reportedly “engaged in conducting fashionable boarding places.”

The eastern store front of the Barnard Block, on the site where the Montana Standard is located today, was part of a large 2-story building that was nearly destroyed in the fire of September 29, 1889. Although heavily damaged in the fire that began across the street, and although reports of the day indicated it burned to the ground, it appears from the Sanborn maps that the basic structure survived and a third story was added during the restoration. The 3-story Barnard Block stood here until the middle 1950s when another fire consumed it, and the present 2-story Montana Standard building was erected.

By 1910 the sisters had moved the Mikado a few doors west, to 41 West Granite, and their original restaurant in the Barnard Block was occupied by Peter Barrenstein’s saloon. Various stores occupied the space until the fire in the 1950s.

New construction about 1917 eliminated the building at 41 W. Granite, and by 1918 the Mikado no longer existed and the Nesbitt sisters appear to be gone from Butte.

Resources: Butte Bystander, special edition, April 15, 1897 (photo) in Gibson’s collection; city directories; Sanborn maps.

Elizabeth Lochrie

By Richard I. Gibson

Like many early Butte residents, Elizabeth Lochrie started in Deer Lodge. Elizabeth Tangye Davey was born there July 1, 1890. Her paternal grandfather had come to Montana in 1866 seeking gold; his son, her father, moved to Deer Lodge in 1887. Her mother May (nee Rogers) had Cornish ancestry.

In Deer Lodge, Elizabeth’s father trained horses, reportedly selling some to Marcus Daly. He was killed by a ruffian when Elizabeth was 12, and her mother was supported in part by philanthropy from some of Butte’s finest, including businessman Dan Hennessey. She also taught school in Butte, commuting from Deer Lodge.

While Elizabeth had shown interest in art from an early age, her first formal training was in about 1904, with Deer Lodge native Vonna Owings, who had studied in San Francisco and went on to become a founder of California’s Laguna Beach Art Festival. Elizabeth graduated from Brooklyn’s Pratt Art Institute in 1911 and returned to Deer Lodge where she married bank manager Arthur Lochrie.

Lochrie home at West Granite and Emmett Streets

Elizabeth’s professional painting career began as a newspaper cartoonist in 1915, but in 1923 she was commissioned to paint murals in the state tuberculosis sanitarium at Galen. During the Depression, she designed murals for post offices in Dillon, MT; Burley, ID; and St. Anthony, ID. Her work was also displayed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

By 1928, as Arthur’s career expanded, the Lochries moved to Helena and Spokane, and eventually (1931) to Butte where Arthur was president of the Miners Bank. Their Butte home at 1102 West Granite Street still stands. It formed their household, Elizabeth’s studio, and an exhibition gallery for her increasingly well-respected work.

Elizabeth Lochrie is most noted for her depictions of Native Americans and their settings, and she is a fixture in most books on western art. One of the last exhibitions in her lifetime was in the late 1970s, at the Charles Clark Art Chateau in Butte, where some of her works are on permanent display. She continued to live in Butte until a few years before her death—she moved to Ojai, California to be near her daughter, and died there in 1981.

Primary biography: A HALF-CENTURY OF PAINTINGS BY ELIZABETH LOCHRIE, By Betty Lochrie Hoag McGlynn, with gallery of paintings.

The Coughlins of Granite Street

By Richard I. Gibson

“Esteemed Woman Called By Death”
—Anaconda Standard, June 7, 1929

223-223½-225 E. Granite. Photo from Jean Koskimaki's collection.

Julia Coughlin’s death at age 66 ended the 45-year tenure by her family in the 200 block of East Granite, between Arizona and Ohio Streets, straight across from the Washington School. For nearly 30 years of that time, Julia ruled the household and the businesses there as a widow.

Julia was born in California about 1863, and came to Butte in 1881. James H. Coughlin came to Butte about the same time (at least by 1885) and based on the estimated ages of their children, they likely married around 1889. James was a carpenter, working that year in the Anaconda Mine and living in a home at 219 East Granite. By 1896 he was working at the Ground Squirrel Mine #1, low on the flank of the Butte Hill just above East Mercury Street and about 8 blocks east of the Coughlin home on Granite.

In 1891, a new two-story duplex went up next door to the Coughlin home, at 221 (later, 223-225) East Granite. The Coughlins moved down the block to another new, single-story duplex at 227.

James Coughlin died in 1900, leaving Julia with at least three and probably five children. They continued to live at 227 East Granite until 1908, when daughter Ellen was in High School. But that year, the family moved to the big duplex at 223-225 where Julia established a confectionery (candy store); it’s likely that Julia bought the property. In 1909, Ellen was a student at the Butte Business College; children William, Julia (Nettie), Helen, Ray, and Tom were also living at the 223-225 address. [Note: it is not completely certain without more extensive research that all these names reflect Julia’s children. Based on ages and occupations, it seems unlikely that they were siblings of the deceased James, but not certain. They all lived in the building at 223-225 East Granite.]

By 1913, Ellen was a teacher, William was a student, Ray was a machinist at the Black Rock Mine, and Tom was a bellboy at the Thornton Hotel, a couple blocks from home. He moved a little further afield the next year, becoming a bellboy at the new Leggat Hotel. In addition to her ongoing management of the confectionery and working occasionally as a clerk, mother Julia became a teacher at Emerson School in 1914. By the early 1920s, the place at 223½ East Granite was a full-blown local grocery store, with Julia listed as the storekeeper, and she was still teaching school as well. Ray was delivering for the Ryan Fruit Company. About 1927, Ray joined his mother in managing the Coughlin Grocery. It appears that Tom and Ellen had moved away or died by then, but mother Julia, daughter Julia, Ray and his wife Pearl, and William were all still living in the big duplex with the grocery.

Julia died June 6, 1929, and son William, who moved to the old home at 227 E. Granite, apparently committed suicide by drinking cyanide November 7, 1932. The following year there were no Coughlins living in this block for the first time since 1885. Ray was an attendant at the Broadway Service Station and living with Pearl at 110½ N. Wyoming, not far from the old family home, and he was also president of the Butte City Council. Daughter Julia followed in her mother’s tradition, becoming a teacher at the Blaine School in Centerville.  She died July 24, 1947.

A grocery store continued at 223½ East Granite until 1939, managed successively by Mrs. Ann Krisk, Mrs. Ann Condon, and Harvey Fort. After the store closed, the place became residential only. A few people continued to live there until 1977, when the building was demolished. Today, this entire block is vacant except for a lone surviving miner's cottage.

Resources: Sanborn Maps, City Directories, Anaconda Standard June 7, 1929. Photo of 223-225 East Granite from collection of Jean Koskimaki, courtesy of Kathy Carlson.

Harry D'Acheul and Kennedy Furniture Company

By Richard I. Gibson

Click any image to enlarge.

Parapet at 18-20 West Broadway today.

The parapet today says “Christie 1932,” but this building is much older than that. In the historic image here the sign says “D’Acheul 1890,” reflecting its origin. Harry D’Acheul, born in Missouri about 1845 to parents native to France, partnered with Prussian-born Henry Parchen to establish a prominent drug store in Butte that operated for many years at 32 North Main. The D’Acheul Drug Company in 1891 advertised that they were importers of assayers’ materials and dealers in paints, oils, varnish, and window glass. (Vignette of D’Acheul Drug Co. store from an invoice in Columbia University Avery Architecture & Fine Arts Library, 1891.)

32 N. Main, 1891

Parchen-D’Acheul had a store in Helena as well, where D’Acheul acquired a house at 804 Dearborn from its owner, Joseph Russell, who suffered financial reverses. D’Acheul then rented it to Conrad and Augusta Kohrs, who bought that house in 1900. In Butte, D’Acheul’s principal construction investment beyond his own business may have been the 1890 four-story business block at 18-20 West Broadway (sometimes given as 22-26 W. Broadway), today part of Jeff Francis’ Piccadilly Museum complex. It originally had a cast-iron ground-floor store front, visible in the historic photo below (from Freeman, 1900). Christie’s was the furniture company here beginning in 1932.

18-20 W. Broadway, 1900

1894 ad

In the 1890s the D’Acheul Block housed the Kennedy Furniture Company on all four floors. By 1900 Kennedy boasted “the most complete line of furniture to be found, probably, in the Northwest” (Freeman, 1900). Kennedy Furniture began in 1894, successor to the Northwestern Furniture Company. In addition to rooms chock-full of chairs, they carried hundreds of carpets, rugs, and tapestries. The ad here, from December 1894, shows a ladies’ desk—expensive at $9.35 but “worth $15.” The interconnected nature of Butte’s business community is reflected in the annotation of Henry Mueller, Vice President of Kennedy Furniture. He was also President of Butte’s largest brewery, the Centennial, and Mayor of Butte in 1891. Mueller lived at 218 West Park. His son Arthur, a later Centennial President, lived at 803 West Park and had the Mueller Apartments on Granite Street built in 1917 as an investment.

1894 ad

Harry D’Acheul was elected in October 1882 to serve as a director of W.A. Clark’s Moulton Mining Company, which in its first nine months of operation had produced $300,000 in bullion; as of October 21, 1882, the Engineering & Mining Journal reported that they had 10,000 cords of wood on hand. In 1884 D’Acheul was also co-owner of Butte’s first public electric plant on East Mercury Street, together with W.A. Clark, Patrick Largey, John Caplice, and W.M. Young. The investors had formed the Brush Electric Light and Power Company of Butte in 1882. The company initially generated power at the Burlington Mill, supplying electricity to first illuminate the business district with 25 light bulbs on December 6, 1882. One of those lamps was in Parchen & D’Acheul’s drug store. Two years later Parchen-D’Acheul’s store was the locale where Butte residents came to see the power of the then-new Brush-Swan Incandescent Lamp, which promised to be a bulb suited for general household use.

311 W. Granite, D'Acheul House

Harry and Hattie D’Acheul’s home still stands at 311 (313) West Granite. See this later post for a report on the 1912 fire that destroyed the original Parchen-D'Acheul store at 32 N. Main.




Image sources: Ads, Montana Standard, Dec. 31, 1894, from Library of Congress; Kennedy Furniture/D’Acheul Block from Freeman, 1900, A Brief History of Butte, Montana (scan by Butte Public Library); D’Acheul Drug vignette from an invoice in Columbia University Avery Architecture & Fine Arts Library, 1891; “Christie 1932” and D’Acheul House photos by Dick Gibson.

Myron Brinig

by Richard I. Gibson

Jewish, gay, and of Romanian ancestry, author Myron Brinig was born in Minneapolis in 1896 but spent his childhood in Butte (1897-1914). The Brinigs lived at 814 West Granite, a little blue miner’s cottage that survives today, and Myron’s father Maurice (known as Moses), a Butte dry goods merchant, gave Myron his model for Singermann, one of the main characters in his novels.

The Sisters, set in part in Butte fictionalized as Silver Bow, Montana, became a 1938 feature film starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn. But Brinig’s best characterization of Butte is Wide Open Town, first published in 1931. That book among others led critics to call Brinig one of the leading young writers in America in the 1930s.

Three novels recount Butte life in the 1910s to 1930s: Richard K. O’Malley’s Mile High, Mile Deep, Ivan Doig’s Work Song, and Brinig’s Wide Open Town. While all three are interesting and entertaining portrayals of Butte, my favorite is Wide Open Town, set about 1910. Virtually all of the action takes place in Uptown Butte, and the main characters walk all over – just as I do. I especially relate to Irish immigrant Roddy Cornett, a spieler, who makes his living as a walking, vocal advertisement calling out shopkeepers’ deals on the streets. His nephew John Donnelly falls in love with Zola, a prostitute; one of Brinig’s most lyrical passages describes their outing on Big Butte. “The sun was swimming down the sky into the comfortable, golden placidities of the afternoon. The east was mellowing; the west more fiery. Where does the sun go when it leaves off this sky? Perhaps in Ireland it is morning now, or deep night…”

The New York Times reviewed Wide Open Town in 1931 thus: “In recreating life in [Butte] during the heyday of miners and prostitutes and saloons, Mr. Brinig writes with the throttle wide open.” In the introduction to the 1993 Sweetgrass Books edition, Earl Ganz quotes Montana historian and author H.G. Merriam describing Brining: “He's not really a Montana writer. He's a Butte writer. That's different.”

Brinig spent most of his life in the artist colony of Taos, New Mexico, and New York City, where he died in 1991.

Carpenters' Union Hall in jeopardy

 By Richard I. Gibson

Update, January 29, 2013: At a settlement conference before a federal judge, the local Carpenters Union Hall, Inc. and the regional union council agreed that the Carpenters Union Hall Inc. is the rightful owner of the building, will retain possession, and the deed will go to them once the local judge reviews the terms of the federal ruling. This is good news; it was the competing regional council that claimed to own it and wanted to demolish it.  Montana Standard article.

While molten rock was solidifying to become the Butte granite 78 million years ago, sandy rivers flowing near what is now Columbus, Montana, watered dinosaurs and primitive mammals. And some of those river sands found their way to Butte — with a little help from an Italian-born quarryman.

Brick and granite dominate Butte's construction materials, but a few other natural stones are present as well. The entry arches and window sill courses at the 1906 Carpenters' Union Hall, 156 W. Granite St., are made of gray Montana sandstone, quarried near Columbus between 1890 and 1910.

From architect's plans, June 17, 1906. Click to enlarge.

Carved decorative vertical lines dominate the rock, but they do not conceal the original cross-bedding—angular sub-horizontal curving trends in the fine-grained sandstone layers that reflect the currents in those 78-million-year-old rivers. The quarry just north of Columbus also provided the stone for much of the Montana State Capitol in Helena, and it can be found on the Silver Bow County Court House and other buildings. Michael Jacobs (born Jacobucci) came to Montana from Italy as a stone carver and mason, and eventually became a manager at the quarry around 1901. Jacobs became rich on this popular sandstone, finishing his 3,500-square-foot mansion in Columbus about 1907 and serving as the town's mayor in 1913-14.

The Anaconda Standard for June 17, 1906, headlined the sketch included here “Carpenters’ Union Hall to be Model.” The building was expected to be a notable addition to the central part of the city, with rooms specially designed as meeting halls for various organizations. “Careful attention has been given in the designing to heating and ventilation, and the structure will be a model in this respect.”

The value of the hall was evident within a few years. A previous blog post reported on Emma Goldman’s visit to Butte in 1910, when she spoke at the Carpenters’ Union Hall. Now, in 2012, the building is threatened with demolition in a squabble between the corporation that owns the building and the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters from Seattle that claims to own it. At a court hearing May 4, 2012, the parties decided on a plan for paying bills, but the broader question of ownership remains unsettled and will likely go to a trial later this year. The local folks want to re-roof the building to save it; the Seattle union seems to prefer to let it decay to the point that demolition becomes the only option. In my opinion—and I’m not a party to this case—that sounds to me like aggravated demolition by neglect, something that is illegal in Butte. It will be interesting to see if the city-county is willing or able to enforce its own historic preservation law. 

The same June 17, 1906, newspaper touted other elements of Butte’s 1906 building boom: plans for the new State Savings Bank (Metals Bank) were being reviewed, while work on the Symons Store (Phoenix Block), Leonard Hotel, Public Library, Marshall Flats (Copper at Montana), and a 16-room flat on West Galena near Columbia (Clark St. today) were all progressing favorably. The Napton was also built that year. The lot at Granite and Alaska, where the Silver Bow Club was about to be erected, was being cleared. The large house that stood on that corner had been cut in half with the plan of moving it to South Idaho Street; progress was slow, and it took a week to get the front half just two blocks west to Idaho, disrupting the trolley system, but “the contractor is a nervy man and he seems determined to get the building moved to its new location at any cost.”

Note: the first part of this post was previously published in an article I wrote for the Montana Standard in 2008.

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.

Before the Hennessey, there was the Centennial Hotel

August 5, 1879, Butte Miner

By Richard I. Gibson

Volume 1, No. 1 of the Butte Miner, August 5, 1879, includes front-page ads that suggest Butte was already becoming a settled metropolis rather than an ephemeral mining camp.

Eight physicians and surgeons advertised their services, as well as one dentist. Dr. J.W. Beal, a native of Ohio, had practiced medicine at Alder Gulch and German Gulch for 12 years before coming to Butte in 1876. In addition to his work in medicine Beal was an entrepreneur, building and running the Centennial Hotel (opened July 4, 1876) at the corner of Main and Granite where the Hennessey Building stands today, until the hotel burned down April 24, 1888. He served in the territorial legislature and was elected Butte mayor in 1881. He died at German Gulch, where his son owned at least two mines, on June 8, 1901 at age 73.

Centennial Hotel, photo ca. 1880,
via Montana Standard (copy in BSB Archives files)

The two-story Centennial Hotel in the photo here included a saloon run by Beal’s son-in-law George Newkirk, an office, the 30-by-40-foot dining room, kitchen, laundry, wood house, and a two-level outhouse, as well as a nearby ice house. George Newkirk’s Butte mineral collection was reported to be the best in the Territory and was (perhaps) sent for display at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

A minimum of eight lawyers and notaries provided legal aid to the growing town. Three assayers offered their analyses, while a watchmaker and jeweler held forth at Dellinger’s store on Main Street.

Henry Valiton’s livery stable at the West Park Street Bridge (presumably the bridge over Missoula Gulch) rented barouches (fashionable carriages with collapsible hoods to protect the passengers from the elements), bench wagons, sulkies, covered carriages, and saddle horses, and claimed to have the finest hearse in Montana. The stable had a “GRANITE FLOOR” superior to any other in Butte. Like Dr. Beal, Valiton went on to become a Butte mayor, and partnered with Marchesseau in the 3-story Beaver Block that stood at the corner of Granite and Main (where the Wells Fargo Bank is today) until it burned in 1968.

The St. Nicholas Hotel advertised a dining room that could seat 100. It was on East Broadway, straight across from the site of the 1890 City Hall, and bragged that it was the largest hotel in Butte.

All this in a city whose population in the 1880 census was 3,363.

A developer to help Butte grow

Photo from Progressive Men of the State of Montana, c. 1901.

John Noyes is not typically on the list of remarkable men of Butte, but he probably should be. Born in Canada in 1828 to parents from New England, he joined the California gold rush at age 23. In 1860 he was at Virginia City, Nevada, continuing work as a placer miner, when he became part of a company of 115 men sent out to fight the Indians. Noyes was among the 17 survivors.

After brief sojourns in Washington, Idaho, and Montana in 1861-65, he journeyed back to Canada. Returning to the US, he abandoned his plan to become a farmer in Missouri, and bought a shipment of mercantile goods to supply to the Montana mining camps. His initial purchase was lost in the sinking of the steamer Grant, but undaunted (and with insurance money in hand) he brought a second shipment to Ft. Benton in 1866 and soon made his way to Butte.

His main Butte mines, the #1 Original and #2 Original, gave him significant capital. Among his most worthwhile investments were real estate tracts for the growing town. He and partner Upton laid out and sold lots in two early (1888) additions to the Butte townsite: Noyes & Upton’s Addition defined streets from Gold to Aluminum, between Main and Montana, and the Noyes & Upton Railroad Addition platted the neighborhood from California to Oregon Street, between Third and Front.

His mining and investments turned him into a millionaire by the time of his death, March 21, 1902, his 74th birthday. You can find an excellent report on Mr. Noyes and his wife Elmira (who he married when she was 15 and he was 42, and who was important in Butte society in her own right) in Zena Beth McGlashan’s book, Buried in Butte (p. 113-121).

The prestigious Noyes homes were at 47 E. Granite (northwest corner of Wyoming) and around the corner at 215 N. Wyoming, across the street from the Butte Brewery. There’s a parking lot there today.

Emma Goldman comes to Butte

Emma Goldman c. 1911

Most students of Butte history know of one notorious woman’s visit to Butte in 1910: Carrie Nation brought her hatchet but had little impact locally, beyond entertainment. Another woman, prominent in her day, also visited Butte in 1910—Emma Goldman.

Not a household name today, Emma Goldman was indeed well known nationally in 1910, as an anarchist, anti-religion zealot, advocate for birth control and homosexual rights, and more. Butte culminated her five-month 1910 tour, which her manager boasted “had not a single encounter with the police.” Among her previous run-ins with the police was an arrest in 1901, following the assassination of William McKinley by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Goldman admitted meeting Czolgosz, but disavowed any connection with his act; she was released two weeks later after “third degree” interrogation. (Image below, from Anaconda Standard, Sept. 22, 1901.)

In Butte at the Carpenter’s Union Hall on Granite Street Goldman spoke in June 1910 on “Francisco Ferrer and the Modern School.” Ferrer was a fellow anarchist and educator, executed in Spain because the church feared his teachings, according to Goldman. Her second speech focused on “The White Slave Trade,” by which she mostly referred to prostitution. Butte had quite a reputation in that area, of course, but it was a nationwide issue.

Goldman came to Butte three more times, in 1912, 1913, and 1914. Although she was an American citizen by virtue of marriage, her husband’s citizenship was revoked and courts held that had invalidated Emma’s as well. She was deported to Russia (her 1869 birthplace was in Lithuania, at the time a part of the Russian Empire) in 1920. She had become known as “the most dangerous woman in America.” Disillusioned with the Soviet experiment, she left in 1921 and spent the rest of her life—not quietly—in Europe and Canada. She died in 1940.

As a personal aside, as much as I know that Butte was an incubator for all manner of ideologies, and that all manner of people needed and wanted to visit Butte in those days, it pretty much freaks me out that Emma Goldman came to Butte four times. And spoke in places that I pass nearly every day.

Photo c. 1911 from Library of Congress via Wikipedia.