Greeley School

Silver Bow Park neighborhood
Thornton Street at Park Place
Built: c. 1898

Greeley School was built along with many others in Butte as a response to the exploding population in the late 1890s. First through Eighth Grades were taught at Greeley in its early years. Following are some of the staff at Greeley in 1905 and 1910, revealing a diversity of origins, and residences scattered all over town.

1905

• Principal Mary Moran, Montana native, 15 years experience (13 in Butte)
• Marguerite McDonald (New York), 6 years experience (4 in Butte), graduated State Normal School, Winona Minn.
• Bertha Konen (Illinois), 3 years (7 months Butte)
• Annie Moses (Michigan), 1 year (7 months Butte)
• Kathleen McDonald (Michigan), 5 (3)
• Bessie Vaughn (Wisconsin), 2, (7 mo.)
• Ida Hillas (Ontario), 13 (3)
• Harriet Ballon (Zanesville, Ohio), 17 (3)

In 1910, only one teacher from 1905 was still at Greeley:

Principal Kate Stafford. Teachers: Anna Sennett, Elsa Fasel, Mary Harrington, Ada Myersick, Fannie Spooner, Alice Maguire, Kathleen McDonald. Janitor: John Boyd.

John Boyd the Janitor lived at 525 W. Silver. Principal Kate Stafford roomed in the Pennsylvania Block on Park Street. Ada Myersick roomed at 1212 E. Second St. Kathleen McDonald – 606 W. Park. Fannie Spooner – 207 W. Park.  Mary Harrington – 185 E. Center. Elsa Fasel roomed at The Dorothy (corner of Granite and Wyoming).

Alice Maguire – 807 W. Galena (with Mary (widow of John), Nellie, and Grace. Perhaps Mary was the mother of three sisters, all of whom were teachers). Anna Sennett – 411 W. Quartz, where she lived with Helen Sennett, teacher at Emerson, along with other Sennetts: James – clerk Hennessy’s; John – miner; Mary – stenographer; Nora (widow Michael) – grocer 306 N. Jackson. 411 W. Quartz was a busy place for such a small home!

Third Graders at the Greeley School in 1905 were to be able to answer these questions:

How were the canyons and gulches formed? What would the level valley south of town indicate? What are sand, clay, loam, alluvium? Note.—Some of the most common properties of the minerals (quartz, feldspar and mica) could be taught here with profit.

On the subject of language,

The chief result to be obtained from the study of language is power of expression rather than a knowledge of grammar. The power of expression, however, is useless unless one has something to express. In this branch of work it follows, therefore, that the activities are two-fold, (1) the getting of knowledge, and (2) the proper facility in giving expression thereto.

Third graders would read Robinson Crusoe.

Greeley had served as a community center for several years before it closed in 2004. After several years of discussion among the Butte School District, County Commissioners, and the Public Housing Authority, with nothing coming of it, in 2013 the school was sold to Doug Ingraham who plans to try to save the historic building and return it to viable use.

Resources: Annual Report of the Board of Education and City Superintendent of Schools, Vol. 18, 1905; digitized by Butte Public Library (source of photo).

What was there? Dakota between Broadway and Park

1901 image; scanned by BSB Public Library. Looking SW.

By Richard I. Gibson

Today the west side of this block is a parking lot to the south and a building occupied by Western Montana Mental Health, at 106 West Broadway, on the north. The space has a long history, of course, as do most blocks in Historic Uptown Butte.

Many older residents probably recall the 1972 Penney’s fire that created the parking lot here. The 4-story Penney’s building had been built there by 1916, when three different stores occupied the first floor, including wholesale liquors and a trunk repair shop. The rest of what is now the parking lot was filled in 1916 by four more retail establishments, including a photographer, a restaurant, and a dealer in prints, wallpaper, and picture frames. The foundation of the mental health building is actually that of the old Butte Public Library, partially destroyed in a fire March 27, 1960. The top floor and turret were removed or destroyed but much of the existing building today is the old library.

In 1900 Dakota Street was called Academy, and the library occupied the northern section of the block, with the 3-story Harvard Block right next door on Broadway. The Harvard Block was a boarding house with a printer’s shop in the basement. Today’s parking lot portion was largely a vacant lot in 1900, but the northwest corner of the Academy-Park intersection held three tiny (each approximately 12’x12’) brick-veneered stores and a shed. The northeast corner of what is now the parking lot, facing Academy at the alley, was occupied by a bicycle sales and repair shop.

Nine years earlier, 1891, the entire eastern three-quarters of the block along Academy, from Broadway to Park, held the Butte Public School and its surrounding grounds, visible in this previous post. The school was built before the fall of 1884. Prior to its construction, it’s likely that a few cabins occupied the block but there is no good documentation for this.

Image from Western Resources Magazine, 1901 (public domain). Scanned by Butte-Silver Bow Public Library.