The Great Building Boom of 1906

The Napton, with its four medallions for 1906.

By Richard I. Gibson

Note: this post is modified from an article written by Gibson and published in the Montana Standard in 2008.

1906 was a watershed year in Butte—the end of the War of the Copper Kings. When Augustus Heinze sold most of his holdings to the Amalgamated Copper Company (later to become Anaconda), more than 100 lawsuits were settled. This cleared title to millions of dollars in land ownership and freed up money for investors. And the building boom was on. Yes, there were still deals to be done between Clark and his heirs and the Anaconda Company, but for practical purposes, the war was over.

With a county population exploding from fewer than 50,000 in 1900 to at least 85,000 in 1917, Butte needed more and bigger of everything, from apartments and churches to office buildings. Butte produced some of the grandest buildings in its history in a brief period from 1906 to 1908.

Granite Street must have been in a near-perpetual state of disarray in 1906, as huge structures were erected from the Leonard Hotel on the west to the Thornton Hotel Addition on the east, near Wyoming Street. Between them, the Silver Bow Club, Carpenters Union Hall, and Telephone Company (later the Water Company) joined the list of “under construction” places in 1906-07. The Napton apartment building, 25 E. Granite, memorializes 1906 in four huge medallions across its upper façade.

1906 Symons Store (Phoenix Block) as it looked in 1939.

A new “labor temple” at 128 West Broadway and the Buol Building at 132 West Broadway appeared in 1906-1908. The distinctive green and white Moorish appearance of the Butte Floral Co. at 27 W. Broadway is another 1906 addition. First Baptist Church, Broadway at Montana, was erected in 1907-08 to replace a smaller first-generation church on the same site.

One of Butte’s most significant and prestigious structures, the Metals Bank skyscraper at Park and Main, was completed in 1906, while just down the street the Phoenix Building was rising from the ashes of the “million dollar fire” that destroyed the previous Symons Department Store on September 25, 1905.

Marcus Daly’s statue was being created by Augustus St. Gaudens in 1906, and was unveiled on North Main Street in 1907. In 1908, two prominent homes were built on the west side, together with many smaller houses. 

South of the main business district, Madame Marie Paumie had the St. Francis Apartments built at 110 S. Dakota in 1906, adjacent to her cleaning establishment (now the Post Office at Dakota and Galena). St. Mark’s Lutheran Church went up at Montana and Silver in 1906-1908 at a cost of $16,000. And down on Front Street, Bennett Block #2 (the Deluxe, slated for demolition today) was erected. 

The legacy of a century-old building boom is with us today – as treasures in architecture all over Uptown Butte.

The video below by Edoardo Ramponi includes some mentions of buildings involved in the 1906 building boom.

Fair Drug & Assayers Supplies

By Richard I. Gibson

Scott Robert Fair was born November 26, 1857, in St. John, New Brunswick, to parents who were natives of Ireland. Fairville, today a neighborhood in St. John, was named for his father, the first resident there. Scott Robert began to study pharmacy in Boston when in his late teens. After working in Boston and New York, he came to Montana about 1889.


By 1893 he had established (with assayer Olof Bergstron) a drug store and assay supply outlet at 137 East Park, on the northwest corner with Arizona Street. He at least dabbled in mining, establishing the Mayflower Mine south of Whitehall—which by about 1896 he had sold to W.A. Clark for a reported $150,000. The Mayflower went on to produce more than 225,000 ounces of gold and 875,000 ounces of silver for Clark and later the Anaconda Company, a total value of around $3 million by 1961, most of it in 1896-1901. New owners in the 2000s have been testing and drilling to evaluate re-opening the Mayflower.  

Invoice, dated Dec. 30, 1900,
to The Butte General Electric Co.,
purchased 45¢ worth of tubing
and paid the bill 1/17/1901

Fair was closely connected with W.A. Clark. In addition to the sale of the mine, his partner Bergstron was the assayer for the Colorado Smelting & Mining Company, of which Clark was vice-president. In February 1900, Fair was summoned to Washington. D.C., to testify in the Senate hearings related to Clark’s alleged bribery of the Montana legislature to “buy” that Senate seat. Fair was asked directly whether he told Montana legislator Thomas Normoyle that $10,000 was his if Normoyle would vote for Clark. Fair denied that, and other suggestions, strenuously—but Normoyle insisted that he had in fact made such an offer, in Fair’s establishment at 115 East Park Street. The upshot of the hearing was the Senate’s refusal to seat Clark; he resigned from the position before he could be ousted, then famously got his friend the Lieutenant Governor of Montana, in the absence of the Governor, to appoint him to that now-vacant seat. That ploy failed as well, but Clark was finally elected and seated in the U.S. Senate in 1901.

1901 advertisement

When he began the drug store at 137 E. Park, Fair lived at 408 West Quartz (a house that I can see out my window as I type this) with his brother George F., who dealt in real estate. By 1896, he and his wife Caroline were living at 606 West Park, and in 1897-98, they relocated to a new home at 221 N. Excelsior which would stay in the family at least until 1963. About the same time, they occupied the new building at 115 East Park that would house the drug and assay company for two decades.

Among the products available at Fair’s Drug was a special “pneumonia mixture,” touted as a cure and sold to treat miners’ consumption (silicosis).

The Fairs participated in Butte’s high society. Caroline Fair attended affairs with Mrs. A.H. Heilbronner, Mrs. Reno Sales (he was chief geologist for the Anaconda Company) and many others.

1907 advertisement

S. Robert Fair died May 20, 1914. His widow Caroline and son George R. continued to run the Fair Drug and Assay Supply Co., but in 1918 they moved the operation a block to the east, to the corner storefront in the new Arizona Hotel on the southeast corner of Park and Arizona. The drug store address was 200 E. Park. In 1918 George was living at 628 W. Quartz. Caroline, Robert’s widow, died in 1944. Her daughters Katherine, Caroline (McCarthy), and Nellie (McDaniel) lived in Butte until the 1960s. Katherine died in September 1963, when she was living at 317½ N. Alabama Street.

The Fairs continued to run the drug store in the Arizona Hotel until about 1936-37, when Ben Gunnary took over. The original drug store building, 115 E. Park, served as the Union Grill for most of the 1930s and was known as Frank’s Café in 1954. In the late 1950s and early 1960s both 115 E. Park (Jim’s Trading Post) and the Arizona Hotel corner store were used furniture shops.

Arizona Hotel c. 1919

The Arizona Hotel was demolished about 1965, and the west half of the 100 block of East Park was removed in 1967-68. About 1971 the Burger Crown restaurant was built on the site of the Arizona Hotel. The Burger Crown burned May 4, 1975, and today that space is the parking lot for Sparky’s Garage Restaurant.

About 1969, the present building went up on the site of 115 E. Park and that half of the block. It held Currie’s Tire & Appliance Center for years, and many still refer to it as the tire store. Where it stands today, in 1900 there were nine storefronts on Park and five more on Wyoming, plus various outbuildings. Among the businesses were a tent manufacturing factory, two restaurants, a Chinese tailor, two saloons, one bakery, an auto dealer, a hat shop, a sausage factory, a liquor store, and a cleaner.

Sources: The Story of Butte, Butte Bystander, April 15, 1897 (source of main photo), in Gibson’s collection; The History of Montana, by Helen Fitzgerald Sanders, Volume 3, 1913; Congressional Record, Montana Senatorial Election Hearings, Feb. 5, 1900; Anaconda Standard, May 21-22, 1914; August 12, 1912; June 30, 1907; March 24, 1901; Sept. 21, 1963; Advertisement from Souvenir History of the Butte Fire Dept., 1901, Butte Public Library scan; Invoice, dated Dec. 30, 1900, to The Butte General Electric Co., purchased 45¢ worth of tubing and paid the bill 1/17/1901, via Rocky Mountain Museum of Military History (Ft Missoula); City Directories; Sanborn maps.

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.

What Was There? 69-71 West Broadway

By Richard I. Gibson

Although later Sanborn maps say the building that stood here was built in 1898, the 1900 map shows three vacant 1- and 2-story dwellings “damaged by fire,” and I believe that the 5-story Miner Building was erected in late 1900 and 1901. News reports have the foundation being dug in August 1900. At about the same time, the Butte Miner also constructed a smaller building further west, at 121-125 West Broadway, to serve as corporate offices, and the two new buildings together replaced the small one at 27 W. Broadway, which the Miner had certainly outgrown by 1901. The Miner used 121-123-125 W. Broadway as its masthead address starting December 1, 1901, when they ran a front-page announcement of the “new and enlarged Miner.”

Deseret News, Aug. 28, 1900

The Miner Building was built like a skyscraper, with a steel frame supporting concrete floors and the roof. In addition to editorial offices, this was the printing headquarters for not only the Butte Miner, but other publications that used the Miner’s equipment. One example is the Montana Catholic, published from here in the early 1900s. The building also housed offices for accountants and attorneys.

In 1928, three years after W.A. Clark died, the squabbling among his heirs was over, and his son Will (W.A. Clark, Jr.) had lost. All of Clark’s assets, including the Butte Miner and its two buildings, went to the Anaconda Company, and the Anaconda Standard newspaper took over the Miner; the combined paper became the Montana Standard which had offices in this building into the early 1960s.

Toward the end in 1928, all of Clark’s surviving companies had their offices here, including the Elm Orlu Mining Co., Timber Butte Milling Co., Moulton Mining, the Clark Law Library, Clark-Montana Realty Co., and the Butte Electric Railway Co. (the trolley service), in addition to the Butte Miner. All were headed by W.A. Clark, Jr., in 1928 until the August takeover by Anaconda, and most were on the upper floors of this building.

Immediately to the west (left in photo at top) was the Empress Theater* which burned in 1931 and was demolished in 1935 to create a pass-through gateway for Greyhound buses. The Miner Building was demolished in 1965 to expand the bus pull-through, and the present parking structure was built in the early 1990s after the bus station moved.

*second of that name; originally the Lulu, then called the Orion; renamed the Empress when the Empress across the street, in the Maguire Opera House building, burned in 1912; the opera house was replaced by the Leggat Hotel.

Resources: Montana Catholic, January 21, 1905 (photo); Deseret News, Aug. 28, 1900 (article); city directories; Sanborn maps. The story of newspapers in Montana history is told in Dennis Swibold's book, Copper Chorus.

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).

“My friends call me Zig”

By Richard I. Gibson

C.O. Ziegenfuss is certainly not a common name in Butte history, but he was a renowned newspaperman of the last quarter of the 19th Century. He seemed to follow trouble, and he made the news several times while reporting it.

One of his early assignments, for the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Times, was to cover the June 21, 1877, hangings of activist Irish coal miners—the Molly Maguires. He made his way west within a few years of that event, and was in Butte by 1886, working as editor of the Butte Miner when it was located at 16 W. Broadway, an address that evolved to 27 W. Broadway, in the building that was remodeled in 1906 to house the Butte Floral Company.

During Zig’s short (8-month) tenure as the Miner’s editor, he was nearly murdered there in the newspaper office, on June 23, 1886.

At 5 o'clock this evening a desperate attempt was made to assassinate C. O. Ziegenfuss, editor of the Miner. The would-be murderer is a carpenter named Miller, whose daughter eloped a few days ago from Anaconda with a young fellow named Harrington. Miller pursued the couple to this city and found them occupying an apartment together. He compelled Harrington to marry the girl and then went around town boasting of what he had done. Next morning the Miner contained a brief account of the affair, and in the afternoon Miller visited the newspaper and demanded a retraction. Editor Ziegenfuss told him he would investigate the matter and publish a retraction if one was deserved. Miller went away apparently mollified, but returned later in an intoxicated condition and made a nuisance of himself, generally. This evening he returned again and requested a private interview with the editor, who conducted him to the editorial room, up stairs. When the head of the stairs was reached Miller suddenly grasped Ziegenfuss with one hand and, drawing a pistol with the other, fired at his head. The bullet whistled past its target, and Ziegenfuss and the shootist rolled down the stairs together. In the descent the pistol was dropped and Miller after being severely pummeled by an attache of the business office, was given into custody. A charge of an attempt to kill will be entered against him to-morrow. Mr. Ziegenfuss was not injured in the least by his rough experience, and numerous friends are congratulating him upon his narrow escape. Public feeling is strong against Miller.

That same month, Zig was appointed to lead the New York World’s expedition to Alaska to check out rumors of gold in the territory acquired by the U.S. 20 years earlier, but as far as I can tell that expedition never happened. By 1890, Ziegenfuss was in California, where he soon became known as one of the preeminent newsmen of the West Coast. He served in various editorial and reporting positions at the San Francisco Chronicle, the Calaveras Citizen, San Francisco Post, Stockton Mail, Fresno Republican, Fresno Expositor, San Francisco Examiner, and the Republican of Phoenix.

He made the news in Fresno in 1897 and Calaveras in 1900, both times as the victim of attacks by citizens irate at the way they were treated in his newspapers—but he brushed both off as he had the skirmish in Butte.

By 1902 Zig was editor and proprietor of the Manila American, in the Philippines. He returned to San Francisco in late summer 1902 because he contracted malaria and dysentery in the Philippines; the Manila newspaper was for sale. He was found dead in his hotel room November 6, 1902, asphyxiated because a gas burner was turned full on. Suicide was suspected initially, but the death was ruled accidental. His remains were cremated at the San Francisco Odd Fellows’ crematory and sent to his mother in Pennsylvania; the San Francisco Press Club conducted a memorial in his honor. It was recalled that “he had an inexhaustible fund of good humor, and was at all times considered the best of companions.” In 1895, when he managed the California News Agency on Bush Street in San Francisco, he was quoted as saying "I admit that I have rather a hard name to spell or pronounce, and that is why I encourage my friends in their proclivity to call me 'Zig.' "

Resources: San Francisco Chronicle's special Butte reporter, published in Los Angeles Herald, June 24, 1886 (main quote of Butte story); Engineering & Mining Journal, July 3, 1886; San Francisco Call, Sept. 19, 1895 (source of sketch); San Francisco Call, Nov. 7, Nov. 9, Nov. 12, 1902; Butte Bystander, The Story of Butte, 1897, p. 67; Sanborn maps; city directories.

The Hancocks of Caledonia Street

Left to right: 951, 947, 943 Caledonia

By Richard I. Gibson

The 900 block of Caledonia was home to four related families for much of the early 20th Century. Their diverse occupations connect us to much of Butte’s history.

The three similar homes at 943, 947, and 951 Caledonia were all built about 1898, probably by the same builder. They were the first homes on the block (and pretty much the only ones in the area), and were the only three houses here in 1900, but by 1916 twenty homes stood on the Caledonia-Excel-Woolman-Henry block, and there were only four vacant lots remaining as this area’s population exploded. A new fire station was just down the block.

In 1900, John Nance, a miner, lived in the new house at 943 Caledonia. Family history says that Native Americans were still living on Big Butte at that time, and would often knock on the door to beg for a bicky (a biscuit). The family maintained a cow, a horse, and chickens. When John worked the night shift, he would take his wife, Mary, to her parents’ home on East Park (probably 441 E. Park), picking her up on his return in the morning.

Left: duplex, 939-935 Caledonia. Right: 931 Caledonia.

Mary was the daughter of John and Ellen (nee Carne) Hancock. By 1900, the Caledonia neighborhood was growing fast, and by the early 1900s homes were built east of the Nance home at 943. The west half of the big duplex at 939-935 became the home of Mary’s parents. John, a miner, and Ellen Hancock had three daughters – Mary (Nance), Clara (Rowe), and Ethel (Downing) – who after marriage lived at 943, 931, and 935 (the other half of the duplex) Caledonia, respectively. The also had another daughter, Adeline, and a son, Joseph. Joseph lived at 939 with his parents in 1910 when he was a clerk at Hennessy’s.

Robert Downing, a collector for the Butte Miner Publishing Co. in 1900, had lived at 513 N. Montana before marrying Ethel Hancock and moving to 935 Caledonia Street. By 1910, he was the Advertising Manager for the Butte Miner newspaper, and in 1928 he worked at the City Corral. Their daughter Rosalind, living with them in 1928, was a clerk at the Paxson and Rockefeller Co., a drug store at 24 West Park.

John Nance advanced from miner to ropeman helper in the Silver Bow Mine (1910) to pumpman (1928). In 1928, John and Mary Nance’s children were living with them at 943. Harold was a chauffeur with the Canary Cab Co.; John was a miner for the Northern Development Co.; and Percy worked as a clerk at the Western Hardware Co.

Fred and Clara Rowe bought the house at 931 Caledonia in 1905, just five years after it was built in 1900, and they added the second story in 1909. Fred worked as a storekeeper at the Butte & Boston Smelter and in 1910 was a precipitator at the precipitation plant. By 1928 he was Assistant Foreman at the precipitation plant for the Anaconda Company, and his and Clara’s children were living at 931 with them. Margaret was a student; Theo was a laborer for the ACM company; and Wilbur was a teller at the Metals Bank. The Rowes lived at 931 into the 1950s, and their descendents live in Butte today.

947 Caledonia, at center in the top photo, was also connected to the family. It was owned by Richard J. Oates, a partner with Samuel M. Roberts, son of Elisha and Jane (Hancock) Roberts and  nephew of John Hancock and his sister, Elizabeth Anne Hancock Paull. Oates & Roberts, Inc. was established in 1893. They were the printers and publishers of books and The Tribune Review newspaper, located in 1900 at 200 N. Main, and later at 114 E. Broadway and 120 E. Broadway in Butte. The Tribune Review, a weekly published from 1898 to 1920, was in 1900 the official organ of the Republican Party in Silver Bow County, and was leased to the Republican Party during the 1904 election campaign Sept. 2 to Nov. 5. The newspaper also employed several members of the Dunstan family, including in 1900 Thomas Dunstan as an early partner in the enterprise (he lived at at 951 Caledonia, completing the triplet of homes in the top photo). Editor Samuel Roberts was prominent in Butte from the late 1890s into the middle 1920s. He was Clerk of the District court from 1900 to 1904 and was also Treasurer of the Miners Union for some time.

Resources: Information from Rhea Warnecke (great great granddaughter of Elizabeth Anne Hancock Paull, sister of John Hancock), including a letter from Viola Nance Briggs (daughter of John and Mary Nance) to the Butte Historical Society, August 22, 1984; Sanborn maps; city directories; historical plaque for 931 Caledonia. Oates & Roberts ruler photo courtesy of Rhea Warnecke; modern photos by Richard I. Gibson.