What was there? 400 block of East Park

By Richard I. Gibson

Today, the north side of this 800-foot-long block contains three dwellings near the west (Covert St.) end, and one old building about mid-block, the apparently abandoned Wright’s Drug Store (above). But in 1916 this stretch contained five stores, 8 single-family homes plus 8 more alley houses, one saloon, two large stables, a creamery, the drug store, a two-story lodging house, and a total of 28 flats (apartments) in three separate buildings.

The surviving store at about the center of the block (#445), with the Wright’s Pharmacy ghost sign on it (“Try Hoyer’s Magic Liniment”), was built before 1900; the ghost sign is a modern repainting. Sometime around 1910 or so, a rank of five connected buildings, containing four flats each, was constructed stepping up the hill to the north. Addresses there were 449A through 449S East Park Street, and they stood almost against the east wall of the drug store still standing today. They were lost sometime after 1979; both images of these flats (at right) are from the HAER photo record of Butte from 1979, via Library of Congress.

Next to the east, beyond narrow front yards for the flats at 449, was the creamery at 457-459 E. Park, which occupied a long narrow building built before 1890 as a saloon. A more recent, smaller saloon abutted the Creamery to the east in 1916, the only saloon on this side of the street in this block.

Almost directly across the street on Park’s south side, the Lizzie Mine (not operating in 1916), a home, and Sacred Heart School faced the drug store, flats, and creamery in 1916. In addition, the south side of the street in the 400 block held the large C.O.D. Laundry complex at Covert, four stores, another saloon, and 25 more flats and lodging houses. This was a busy block in 1916.

Resources: Sanborn maps.

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.

Thomas Lavell

Ad from Souvenir History of Butte Fire Department (1901). Scan by Butte Public Library.

By Richard I. Gibson

Although Thomas Lavell is sometimes referred to as a French-Canadian (I’ve done it myself) because he was born near Ottawa (Dec. 14, 1853) and came to Montana from Quebec, his parents were both natives of Ireland who emigrated to Quebec in the early 19th Century. Twenty-one-year-old Thomas followed his brother to a small town called Pioneer, in the original Deer Lodge County, in 1874, where they worked a lumber operation. They came to Butte in 1875 or 1876 and established a sawmill and lumber dealership, reportedly providing the material for the first buildings made of sawn wood in Butte.

Lavell house at Park and Idaho. Photo by Dick Gibson.

The brothers expanded into the delivery business by buying Warfield & Hauser’s Butte Transfer Company in 1885, operating the stable at 122 East Park Street (variously known as Lavelle & Hart, Windsor Stables, and Butte Transfer Stable). Thomas ran that company and brother Geoffrey continued the lumber business, which was sold in 1895 when Geoffrey left Montana for Oregon.

Thomas Lavell’s stable—advertising “omnibuses, hacks and baggage wagons meet the arrival of all trains”—became the largest taxicab business in Montana. It was doing well enough as early as 1887 for Lavelle to build the beautiful Second Empire-style home at 301 West Park Street where he and his wife Melissa lived and entertained for decades; Melissa died in 1923 and Thomas lived there until he died in 1941.

Paving Harrison

by Richard I. Gibson

From the 1910s onward, Butte issued Special Improvement District (SID) bonds to finance various projects, just as most cities do. People would buy the bonds, to be repaid with interest over time.

The bond here, courtesy of Robert Edwards, was issued to John Hexem on May 8, 1925, in the amount of $100. The bond generated Mr. Hexem $6.00 annually (6% interest) that was paid when he redeemed the coupons associated with the bond, theoretically until 1933, but this bond’s final balloon payment was in 1929, suggesting that the city was doing well.

SID 323, authorized by Ordinance #1790, August 16, 1924, was for the paving of Harrison Avenue and installing a storm sewer system there. The 46 pages of specifications for the project (used in letting the bids), at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, include estimates of “approximately” 38,525.73 square yards of Rodamite paving two inches thick; 8,176.33 cubic yards of grading; a total of 4,530 linear feet of storm sewer ranging in diameter from 8 inches to 15 inches; 24 concrete catchbasins about 6 feet deep, and one standard manhole.

The work extended from Grand to Harvard on Harrison and included construction of intersections and curbs. This was almost certainly not the first time Harrison was paved (and definitely not the last!), but I have not yet verified when the first paving occurred, nor have I found the cost. Watch for that in a future post.

John Hexem was a contractor (could he have had an interest in the project beyond that of an investor in the bonds?) whose office and home were at 1941 Harrison, just north of the Socialist Hall (Fran Johnson’s Sports Shop today) and right in the middle of this paving project. His home was built after 1916, so it was fairly new when he made his bond investment in 1925.

The bond is signed by the Mayor, City Clerk, and City Treasurer. Mayor William D. Horgan lived at 211 S. Jackson (still standing); clerk Con J. Harrington lived at the Goldberg Block, run by Mrs. Alice Wilson at the northwest corner of Park and Dakota Streets, the building that became the J.C. Penney store and burned down in 1972; and Treasurer Joseph C. Riley lived at 611 N. Wyoming, a little house due east of the Steward Mine and gone today.

Thanks to Robert Edwards for the bond.

Television fever hits Butte

8-17-12
Guest Post By Robin Jordan

In August 1953, the question on the street seemed to be, “What television set are you going to buy?”

A Montana Standard article dated August 2, 1953 announced that KOPR-TV would begin broadcasting from its studios at the Finlen Hotel on September 1, 1953.  Plans were underway to build a transmitter on the Continental Divide. 

According to the article, the station would be on Channel 4 and would be primarily a CBS affiliate, although it would carry some ABC programs, as well as programs for which it had obtained contracts.  It would broadcast on VHF channel 4, which is now assigned to KXLF.

Among those, according to the Montana Standard advertisements, were “Favorite Story,” which was a popular drama with famous actor Adoph Menjou, “Cisco Kid,” and “Boston Blackie.” 

Obviously, the lure of such offerings enticed young and old to gather around the TV set—if you had one.
 
Apparently, every business in town that had a few feet of floor space had television sets on display and advertised them, often lavishly. 

A strange phenomenon emerged: the 17” television at $179.95.  The model and make were immaterial, the price for RCA Victor, Burton, Admiral and others was the same, no matter where they were sold. The weird exception to this rule, which seemed to run from store to store, was the Bendix, which was being sold by Television Sales and Service at 134 E Park.  The Bendix television was obviously a cosmetic improvement over some of the cheaper models; the $429.95 model offered Chippendale-inspired styling on an impressive cabinet.  The Bendix 17-inch model was listed for $209.95.

The old Finlen (previously the McDermott).
The present Finlen, where the TV station
was located, was built in 1923.

The owners of KOPR-TV were quite proactive, staging a television dealers’ show in the Copper Bowl of the Finlen Hotel.  One of the highlights was the unveiling of the new line of Packard-Bell television sets.  Also shown were models released by the Capehart-Farnsworth Company.  Vice President of that company was Philo T. Farnsworth, who owned 6 of the patents necessary to build every television to this day.  He is frequently credited as being the “inventor” or television, although others had worked toward that goal previously.  Others at the show included representatives of Packard-Bell.

Some of the establishments that sold TV sets were Len Waters, in its current location; Butte Stove Repair, 123 E. Park; Home Supply Store, 28 E. Broadway; Standard Furniture, 65 E. Park; LeSage’s, 204 W. Park; Electronics Service, 130 S. Main; Bertoglio Market, 200 N. Main; Home Supply Store, 28 E. Broadway; George’s Appliance, 1659 Harrison and Lowry’s TV and Radio Service, 14 W. Park.
 
Of course, the more well-known department stores were in the mix.  Hennessy’s ran a page-and a-half in the center section of the Standard (known in the business as a three-quarter truck, which would have cost quite a bit more than a single television set) to announce that the store was fully equipped to take care of new television customers.  Sears offered its own line, and Burrs, Park and Dakota; Rosenbergs, 120 N. Main were offering various models of televisions. 

My husband, Dave Jordan, remembers watching the test pattern on the family television set.  In his childhood home, it was common to summon his mother from whatever task to see the new test pattern.  Apparently there was something besides the old black and white Indian Chief we all remember. 

“We watched that test pattern for weeks,” he said. He would have been five years old. Television must have been mesmerizing to keep a five-year-old away from sandlot baseball and the other diversions of summer to be such an attraction.

Robin Jordan is co-editor of The Butte Weekly and an amateur history buff, especially when it comes to Butte history.  She and her husband enjoy many hobbies, including model trains, gardening and reading.

I'm not from Butte

By Richard I. Gibson

I’m not from here, but I live here. According to many locals, I’ll never be from here, and the differential between “native” and “outsider” is sometimes intense enough to feel. And sometimes there’s no differentiation at all: there is no one Butte, and no one characterization of its people.

But whether or not I’m from here, I still thrill with wonder on a subzero night, walking down Park Street past the Mother Lode Theater, where ice crystals sift down like glittering columns in the narrow spotlights above the multicolored Masonic symbols. I can imagine (only imagine) what it was like to have an ore train pass within arm’s length of your house, as I walk along the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railroad trail, as I capture in the sweep of one eye the Immaculate Conception Church spire, the Desperation Fan Tower, and the century-old M on Big Butte. The pigeons still congregate atop the Desperation as it breathes warm air out from the depths of the Anselmo Mine which it served.

300 block of North Main (1942): all gone.
Library of Congress.

I walk down North Idaho Street, Mary MacLane’s “surprising steep Idaho Street hill,” in the footsteps of 3,000 mourners who followed Tom Manning’s casket from Scanlon’s house, now gone from the 300 block three blocks from my own home, to the cemetery, honoring his death at the hands of the Company in the Anaconda Road Massacre a few blocks to the east. Here and there, until the road crews patch them, trolley tracks emerge through worn asphalt. They recall summer Thursdays, childrens’ days at Columbia Gardens when kids rode the trolley for free for a day of wonder and freedom and fun. Trolleys last rode those rails in 1937, but the streets themselves reek of Butte’s history.

A few cracked and patterned sidewalks still bear the imprint “City of Butte 1910.” Were these the very pavements that Carrie Nation trod with her Prohibition fervor that year? Or did Emma Goldman, “the most dangerous woman in America,” an anarchist arrested in connection with William McKinley’s assassination, but later released—did Emma Goldman walk here on her way to the Carpenter’s Union Hall to speak on “the white slave trade” in 1910?

There’s a new building replacing Maguire’s Opera House where Mark Twain and Charlie Chaplin performed, a new building built in 1914. There’s a new building at the corner of Granite and Main, where Dr. Beal’s Centennial Hotel, opened on July 4, 1876, once stood. We call that new 1897 building the Hennessy, and it was headquarters for the Anaconda Company for three-quarters of a century.

Can you hear men’s voices on North Wyoming Street, where the Finlander Hall stood? On a hot August night listen carefully, and you might hear bits of “Solidarity Forever,” echoing down the decades from a similar August night in 1917 when Frank Little spoke at the Finlander and was dragged to his death from the boarding house next door. The song’s voices are accented, out of tune, but unified in their vision. Or go a block north and listen for the murmur of a thousand tired men pouring down the Anaconda Road at shift change. Of all the things that Butte has lost, and there are many, the sounds, the noise, the din of mines, machinery, mules, and the traffic of people in motion and busy and active is one of the most noticeable. Many are the old-timers who had no watch, but knew the time from the mine whistles, each with its own signature sound and direction. Even today, the silent headframes and the lay of the land make it a challenge to get lost in Butte, at least geographically: headframes, Highlands, Big Butte, and East Ridge define your position better than a map. Getting lost in time in Butte—that’s another matter. That’s pretty easy, for people who are from here, and for people like me, who are not.

Stephens Hotel turret, Park and Montana.
Library of Congress.

Can you smell the noodle parlor aromas in Chinatown? You might, because one of the three survivors in Chinatown is the Pekin, still in operation after a century and still in the same family. Especially in China Alley behind the Pekin tantalizing spices grab your attention—but don’t forget this alley was also a scene of death, a shootout that took several lives during the tong wars in 1922. Nothing in Butte is one dimensional.

Can you smell the open sewer that ran through the Cabbage Patch and the East Side? No, it’s long gone, and there are nice new buildings straddling its old location east of Arizona. But look around with 1884 eyes and you’ll see the ditch, a flowing stream for a while, that came out of Dublin Gulch, provided some water to the Butte Brewery on North Wyoming, then continued south to Silver Bow Creek. All filled and paved and gone now—unlike the gulch that came south from the Original Mine, east of the Court House, through the heart of town. That one is paved over, but not gone: the 10-foot-high 1884 culvert that channeled the flow to the subsurface still serves Butte, and was under repair in 2012.

A hundred stables dotted central Uptown Butte in 1884. No smells there, of course.

Can you smell the arsenical fumes that came from open fires, smelters for Butte’s first ores? No, but you may find arsenic in your yard or in your attic. Don’t eat the dirt. Bladder cancer killed my dog, and between them two veterinarians knew of seven cases of canine bladder cancer, all from Butte.

On any Uptown corner, be prepared to be jostled by ghosts in their thousands. Watch out for the ladies in their tight bodices, come to watch the million-dollar-fire on Park Street in 1905, or the crowd that gathered for a similar fire a block west on Park Street in 1972. Or enjoy the camaraderie of ghostly folks out and about, taking care of business, shopping for anything, everything that money could buy, anywhere in the United States—Butte had it. High-end Everitt cars? Yes, in 1910, when it “costs but $1,900” from Tom Angell’s dealership at 10 North Wyoming. I can see folks taking that test drive down Wyoming to Park, certainly turning right or left since another block or two would take them into the red-light district. But even a well-paid miner earning $3.50 a day probably saw owning the Everitt as a pipe dream.

Can you taste the food of thirty nations? Grapefruit in winter? Certainly, from any of a dozen different grocers even in the 1890s. Italian specialties from Savin Lisa’s stores on East Park; solid meat and potatoes in Irish boarding houses, from the Florence Hotel’s dining room that seated 400 to Mary Buckley’s house in Corktown where 30 men gathered to a meal; Cornish pasties in a Walkerville miner’s lunch bucket, and tamales, chop suey, Greek mixtures, and homemade – take your pick.

Butte accosts the senses, all of them. Feel the winter wind cut down an alley, or a moist spring breeze filled with promise, even though there may be snow on the ground in June or July. Those winds blow on to Ireland and Cornwall and Lebanon and China and your families left behind. Does that make it easier to work with the death and dirt of the mines? There’s something this outsider can’t really know.

No, I’m not from here, but Butte is in my blood and brains, and it will never go away.

The giant elk of 1916

You all know this story; just a reminder that the 1916 Elks' convention coincided with Fourth of July. George Everett's recounting of the story says it well, at this link.

Is there time to rebuild the Elk for its centennial in 2016?

Look for Lost Butte in local stores soon - possibly tomorrow or Friday.