Gas station, summer 1939

This photo from the FSA-OWI program was made by Arthur Rothstein in the summer of 1939. The location is the corner of Park and Oklahoma – the gas station is at 501 East Park Street.  The mine in center background is the Moonlight Mine, and right of it on the skyline is the Anaconda Mine.

The vertical standpipe right of center says “steam baths” in vertical letters. It is behind (south of) a building on Broadway Street that contained a sauna – that was within Finntown.

The gas station building was boarded up and vacant by 1951, and was probably gone by about 1960. There is no listing in the city directories for “Consumers Oil Company” so it was either a short-lived business or came under some other name for listing purposes.

—Richard I. Gibson

“The photographs of the Farm Security Administration (FSA)-Office of War Information (OWI), transferred to the Library of Congress beginning in 1944, form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed by Roy E. Stryker, formerly an economics instructor at Columbia University, and engaged such photographers as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks, John Vachon, and Carl Mydans. The project initially documented the Resettlement Administration's cash loans to individual farmers, and the agency's construction of planned suburban communities. The second stage focused on the lives of sharecroppers in the South and of migratory agricultural workers in the midwestern and western states. As the scope of the project expanded, the photographers turned to recording rural and urban conditions throughout the United States and mobilization efforts for World War II.” (From the Library of Congress web site.)

The first block of East Park Street

North side of Park Street, Main to Wyoming, circa 1893. See bottom for annotated version.

By Richard I. Gibson

Somewhat remarkably, most of the buildings in the photo above are still standing. You are looking at the north side of Park Street between Main and Wyoming. From left to right, the buildings are

1. Owsley Block, northeast corner of Park and Main, with the turret. Site of NorthWestern Energy construction today. 

2. Narrow building with a tall turret. Parking lot west of Trimbo’s today, lost in 1973 fire that destroyed Owsley Block (Medical Arts Building).

3. Owsley Block #2, with the prominent bay front. Trimbo’s today.

4 – 5 – 6. Of the three buildings east of Trimbos, two definitely still stand, and probably all three. The first one, with the high second story, is Owsley Block #1. Then there are two buildings of equal height. All three of these buildings are occupied by Rudolph’s furniture today. The façade on the third building has been modified a lot but I think the original building is still in there.

7. The little one-story building is gone, replaced in 1917 by the Chester Block (Whitehead’s) which still stands.

8 – 9.The massive block with the two large awnings is the Shiner Block (Exer-Dance), vacant but still standing in 2015, and the corner building, the Key West House (lodgings) and Bray’s Butte Cash Grocery, is occupied by Rediscoveries today.

This photo dates to 1892 to 1895. The Owsley Block was completed in 1891-92, and The Butte Cash Grocery was located on this corner from 1887 to 1896. The Key West House was not in business under that name in 1895, but of course the sign might still have graced the façade.

The trolley line started in 1890. You can see the tracks in the center of a dirt Park Street. I believe the sidewalks are made of wood, and note the fire hydrant in front of the Butte Cash Grocery and the policeman leaning on the telephone pole to the right.

Courtenay, Case, & Gravelle Company (“Gents Furnishings”), advertised on the east face along the top of the Owsley Block, was incorporated in 1891 and had its store in the big corner building at Park and Main. Joseph Gravelle had come to America from his native France in 1889. After the store closed in 1906 he moved to Waitsburg, Washington to open a store under his own name. Courtenay left the partnership in 1897, to be replaced by Ohioan Arthur Ervin; the store changed its name to accommodate that change in ownership. Joseph Case came to Butte in 1880 from his native San Francisco, to which he returned when the store closed. Ervin also left Butte in the early 1900s.

A.F. Bray

Absolom F. Bray was a more permanent fixture in Butte. He was born Oct. 21, 1852, at Langdon Cross, Cornwall, England, and came to America in 1876. He established his first grocery in Butte about 1885, but failing heath drove him to California for a time. He returned to open the Butte Cash Grocery in 1886. It was originally located at the site of the Murray Bank, the northwest corner of Copper and Main, but he moved to the site in the photo above, Park and Wyoming, the next year. In 1889, Bray was elected to the first Montana state legislature.

“He had a voice that could make a boatswain’s rumble sound like a whisper” – A.F. Bray in the legislature.

When the photo above was made, the store was a typical retail grocery, but in 1896 he moved to the corner of Park and Arizona and focused on the wholesale trade as well as retail. He was doing $1,000,000 a year in revenue by 1901.

“Every nook and corner are crammed with the finest assortment of staple and fancy groceries that the markets of the world can furnish.” —Butte Cash Grocery, in Western Resources, 1901

A.F. Bray died September 5, 1906 in Butte. His son, A.F. Bray, Jr., born in Butte, became a prominent member of the legal profession, serving as the chief judge of the California Court of Appeals. Bray Jr. died in 1987 at age 97.

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Sources:
I do not know the source of the photo at top. It is too old to be in copyright, so it is public domain and free to use, but I would like to credit the source if someone knows.

Courtenay Case & Gravelle store information 

A.F. Bray Jr. 

Progressive Men of Montana; Western Resources, Denver, CO, June 1901 (Bray photo).

Quote about his voice from Walton History, By Shirley W. Cozad

Butte Cash Grocery advertisement from Anaconda Standard, May 29, 1896.

Courtenay Case ad from Anaconda Standard Almanac 1893, digitized by Butte Public Library

Annotated to show buildings including present-day occupants. Owsley and the one labeled #2 are gone today.

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.

Sacred Heart

Original Church, school, and rectory at 444-448 East Park Street.
The first floor continued as the school after the 1912 fire.

by Richard I. Gibson

This post was stimulated by a Facebook discussion. The focus here is only on the buildings associated with Sacred Heart, and is based on a careful look at the addresses in the City Directories and the Sanborn maps. Click on images to enlarge

The Sacred Heart parish was organized in 1901. In 1901-03, they met at 460-464 East Park, probably the early address of the building that would become the church at 448 East Park when it was completed in 1903.

original altar (destroyed in fire)

The first mass, Christmas Day 1903, opened the completed church at 448 East Park Street, on the south side of the street almost directly across from the Wright’s Drug Store that is the only surviving building in this section of the block. The building included the school, and the rectory was next door (444 E. Park). In 1907-08, the Sacred Heart Convent was built at 407 East Mercury.

The church and school stood immediately east of the Lizzie Mine yard on Park, a mine that had ceased operations by 1916. The area is part of today's revitalization on the East Side.

After the 1912 fire

A fire on November 17, 1912, severely damaged the church, but the first floor survived and continued to be used as the parochial school until 1969; it was finally torn down about 1974 as the Anaconda Company bought up properties in anticipation of expanding the Berkeley Pit to this part of town (which obviously did not happen).

A new church was built a block west and across the street, at 355 East Park (address also given as 349-363), one lot west of the corner of Covert and Park Streets, a vacant lot today. It opened in 1913 and the last mass was celebrated in that church July 1, 1970. It was demolished in 1974-75.

New church, at 355 East Park

Resources: City Directories, 1901-1975; Sanborn maps, 1900, 1916, 1951; Butte's Croatian-Slovenian Americans, by Ann Simonich. The postcard photo of the first church is public domain, circa 1904-1910; the photo of the second church is courtesy of the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, from the Jim & Helen Edwards Collection, used by permission. Fire photos from Anaconda Standard, Nov. 18-19, 1912. Many thanks to Irene Scheidecker at the Archives for assistance.

What was there? Park and Main

By Richard I. Gibson

In the wake of the news that NorthWestern Energy may build a new, large building on the northeast corner of Park and Main, I thought it might be interesting to address what was there.

People who lived in Butte in 1973 will probably remember the huge fire that consumed the Medical Arts Building on July 23. That building (seen in the post-card view above) had dominated the corner since it was finished in 1892.  We also know it as the Owsley Block, for William Owsley who had it built, but technically it was Owsley Block #3. Owsley #2 is the building housing Trimbo’s Pizza today, and Owsley #1 stands to the east of #2, originally the Hoffman Hotel.

Early occupants of Owsley Block #3 included Leys’ jewelry store on the ground floor, and the Butte Business College on the top (fifth) floor. Owsley’s fortune – which also undoubtedly helped him win two elections as Butte’s Mayor, in 1882 and 1884 – was based on his livery business, started in 1874, when Butte was near its low point in terms of population and economy.

Precisely when Owsley obtained the corner lot at Park and Main is not known, but by 1884 he had a massive building there, not brick as his later Owsley Block would be, but a two-story wood frame complex that housed not only his huge livery stable, but also a grocery store, saloon, and lodging house, with a tiny cigar store exactly on the corner. The eastern portion was a two-story hay loft, with stalls for horses on both the ground floor and in the basement below.

The northeast corner of the complex, on the alley, held a carriage house and wash room and dressing rooms for drivers. In 1890, the city fire department’s hose cart and 450-foot hose were kept there—to be relocated soon to the new (1890) city hall and fire station a block north on Broadway. Immediately north of the original Owsley complex, but taken up by the new Owsley Block in 1888-92 was another building that contained the Variety Theater, the Telephone Company, and a tin shop in 1884.

Resources: Lost Butte, Montana, by Richard I. Gibson (The History Press, 2012); Sanborn Maps; City Directories; post card view in Dick Gibson's collection.

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.

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.

The Store Beautiful

Photo courtesy John McKee.

By Richard I. Gibson

Symons’ first store opened October 14, 1897, at 54 West Park, but within a year they expanded to the York Block (68-72 West Park) and in 1899 Symons purchased the Maule Block a bit further west, multiplying their total area by six times, to 50,000 sq ft.

All of that was destroyed by the great fire of September 24, 1905, but the Phoenix Block rose from the ashes. By opening day December 5, 1906, the Phoenix held the much expanded Symons Department Store where 300 employees worked in 92,000 square feet of store. Thirty-three more years took a toll, and in 1938-39 a major renovation resulted in the grand re-opening of Symons on May 6, 1939—a $200,000 project created “the store beautiful,” as the Montana Standard called it.

Among many other things, you could have purchased a hard-bound copy of Gone With The Wind for $1.18 (marked down from the usual $3.00), anticipating the December 1939 movie release. They had 1,000 pairs of shoes at $1.49 each, ironing boards for 89¢ and sweaters for 49¢. Their fur department boasted the hiring of Miss Lula Brewer, fur designer and buyer back in Butte after nine years in high-class New York City. Furs with “clever little collar or collarless necklines display a new smartness,” for the best-dressed ladies of 1939.

Valuable furs were kept in a vault under the sidewalk on the Galena Street side of the store. John McKee’s photo here is of the surviving vault door at the sub-basement level. The door probably dates to the 1939 renovation, although the Herring-Hall-Marvin Safe Company was in business under that name from 1892 to 1959. The vault behind this door was cedar-lined and contained untold thousands of dollars worth of furs over its lifetime.

The upper floors of the southern part of the building (facing Galena) were removed about 1965.

Murder at the Maule Block

By Richard I. Gibson

On February 6, 1903, Butte residents opened their Anaconda Standard to read a lavishly illustrated report of a lurid murder. The Standard’s five-column front-page story began, “One woman's infidelity to her husband, the jealous hatred of another married woman for the unfaithful one and the rage of a wronged husband seeking to avenge the destruction of his domestic felicity are the three principal factors in one of the most tragic murders Butte has known for a long time.”

35-year-old Emery Chevrier owned and operated a popular barber shop at 90 East Park on the southwest corner with Wyoming—and he was evidently quite the ladies’ man. In February 1903, at least three women—all married—were the objects of his affections. Mrs. Brooks was the latest, but all three had met Chevrier at a dance at the Scandia Hall on South Main the night of February 5. Chevrier and the three women walked up Main Street after the dance and dined together at the Chesapeake Restaurant on West Park at about 2:30 a.m. Chevrier and Bertha Brooks went to his room at the Maule Block and the other women left. It appears that one of them, Mrs. John O’Reilly, mother of four, was jealous of Mrs. Brooks, and went to the Casino Theater on Galena Street where Walter Brooks worked as a bartender. She informed him of his wife’s behavior and brought him to the Maule Block where Brooks burst into Chevrier’s room, found Chevrier with his wife, and shot him once. The victim fled but Brooks shot him a second time on the stairway landing, where he died.

Brooks admitted the shooting but pleaded self-defense, an accidental discharge of the gun during a struggle. The women were also arrested but were released over the next few days. The trial in March 1903 led to Brooks’ conviction for manslaughter after the jury deliberated for 21 hours.

The site of the murder, the Maule Block, was a three-story lodging house at 78-80 West Park. Symons Department Store owned the building and occupied the first floor, and a tin shop opened on the alley behind #78. Furnished rooms filled the upper floors. The Maule was erected about 1889 to replace the Warfield & Gwin Livery and Feed Stable that burned in 1888. Academy Street (later Dakota) was pushed through from Park to Galena after 1891, leaving two one-story stores at the corner west of the Maule and across from the Renhsaw Hall (Terminal Meat Market). The Maule had paired half-round turrets on the bay-fronted Park Street façade decorated with a two-foot parapet above the cornice. A sidewalk-level entrance in the middle led to the rooms upstairs, and a secondary external stair stood on the west side. The building was destroyed in a huge fire September 24, 1905; when Symons rebuilt in 1906, the new building was called the Phoenix Block which still stands today on the site of the Maule, York, and other buildings.

Bound for Butte—on the Titanic

R.M.S. Titanic leaving Southampton, April 10, 1912.

By Richard I. Gibson

Nineteen-year-old Frederick William Pengelly, a miner from Devonshire and Cornwall, was bound for Butte to begin work in the mines there when he died in the Titanic disaster April 15, 1912. A coal strike had reduced the number of steamers crossing the North Atlantic; Frederick planned on taking a different ship but ended up on the Titanic. At least four Pengellys lived in Centerville in 1912, including likely brothers William, a barber, and John, a miner, who lived at 175 East Center Street, but whether they were related to Frederick, I do not know. He may have been coming to America to connect with his widowed mother’s new husband, Mr. G. Reynolds, a miner.

William Gilbert was on holiday in late winter 1912, back home in Pollardras, near Carleen, Cornwall, from his carpentry job in Butte. He delayed his return trip so that he could take the Titanic, but was among those lost. He was 47.

William Gilbert and his father Thomas came to Butte about 1908; Thomas’s wife stayed in Cornwall and managed a grocery store. William and his father were both carpenters; William specialized as a joiner, a carpenter who tooled wood to fit pieces together without nails or screws. Both lived in a two-story brick boarding house at 1021 East Park, between St. Lawrence and Parrot Streets—both streets long gone into the southern edge of the Berkeley Pit. Their home stood just two blocks below the Pennsylvania Mine where Thomas worked. In 1911 before his ill-fated holiday, William worked at the Mountain View Mine further up the hill. William’s sister Mary came to Butte sometime around 1908-10, and according to family history was the proprietor of the boarding house at 1021 East Park. She was famous for her Cornish pasties.

Frederick Pengelly and William Gilbert both boarded the Titanic at Southampton, and both held second class tickets costing £10 10s—ten pounds, ten shillings, equating to something like $50 in dollars of the day. The Gilberts’ carpentry skills probably earned them about $3.00 to $3.50 per day (carpenters’ pay was close to that of miners), so the one-way fare amounted to more than two weeks’ pay. One might conclude that William Gilbert was frugal with his money, to save a month’s wages for a round-trip excursion to Cornwall and back to Butte.

Photo by F.G.O. Stuart (public domain; copyright expired).

A grim centennial

Ruins of the Olsen Block at left

Lost Butte book update: Photos sent to publisher; word count at 34,000 – requirement is 34,000-36,000, and I’m not quite done yet – so, it’s looking good. Text deadline May 15.

By Richard I. Gibson


A grim centennial

April 10, 2012 marks the centennial of one of the most expensive fires in Butte’s first 75 years. Someone tossed a cigarette into the hay bin at Campana Feed Company’s warehouse at Iron and Nevada. It quickly erupted into a conflagration that destroyed two entire city blocks and left some 200 people homeless, but while there were some injuries, no one was killed. Nearly half of those driven from their residences lived at the Olsen Block, 741-747 S. Wyoming, where a wall of fire blasted out the windows. The total loss was estimated at $350,000 initially, later revised down to $295,000, but it was still the third most costly fire in Butte above ground before 1946 when old Butte High School burned.

Later in 1912 the fourth worst fire loss in pre-1946 Butte struck on September 1 when the original Thomas Block burned in the middle of the first block of West Park Street. Multiple businesses were burned out with a loss totaling almost $221,000 in dollars of the day. The present building, designed by Butte architect Herman Kemna, replaced the old Thomas Block in 1913.

Other big 1912 fires included the destruction of the Grand Opera House where the Leggat Hotel now stands (May 25, a $24,500 loss), Henningsen Produce (January 11, $21,000), Creamery Café (July 30, $49,000), H&B Block (Oct. 18, $49,000), and Sacred Heart Church (Nov. 17, $26,000).

The greatest fire losses in early Butte were the 1889 fire in the first block of West Granite ($512,000) and the 1905 Symons fire on West Park where the 1906 Phoenix Block stands today ($698,000).

The news of the Campana fire was overshadowed in Butte and around the world by the Titanic disaster five days later.

A Street by any other name ...

McKinley School, West Park, 1905. Note trestle over Gulch

By Richard I. Gibson

As Uptown Butte grew from about 4,000 people in 1880 to 23,000 in 1890, more and more homes and buildings were constructed to accommodate them, of course. New additions, such as the 1889-1890 Davis and Barnard Addition along West Broadway, Park, and Galena, created new streets west of Jackson, the early western edge of town.

Grizzly Street was laid out nearly on line with Jackson, between Granite and Copper, and ultimately became part of North Jackson. Crystal and Columbia Streets came into existence about 1890, extending only from Galena to Broadway. Columbia eventually became Clark Street, probably after 1925 when W.A. Clark died, but in 1890 Columbia ran along the weaving Missoula Gulch. A “small stream” flowed between bluffs that were as high as 25 feet on the east side and 15 to 20 feet on the west side. For many years, as Butte grew westward along Park and Broadway, both streets had trestles to carry them across Missoula Gulch and the smaller one west of Excelsior. A stone culvert took the Missoula Gulch stream under Broadway in 1890. Eventually, all of this was filled in and today the only evidence of Missoula Gulch in this part of town is the gentle down-and-up of Park Street as you approach Excelsior.

The short street we know as Hamilton was originally Utah Street; the name changed after the Hamilton Block was built in 1892. And yes, for a time there were two Utah Streets completely unrelated to each other (strictly speaking, the one near Arizona was an avenue).

Before 1890, building addresses on Sanborn maps were a simple counting scheme: 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, with both even and odd addresses on the same side of the street—and the same numbers on the other side of the street running in the opposite direction, sometimes starting from the same arbitrary corner, sometimes not. This had to be confusing (it certainly is to me when I pore over the old maps), with 41 West Granite across the street from 41 West Granite. It’s no wonder that tradesmen often gave their addresses as “Granite Street 4 east of Main,” and the like. Many blocks in 1884 were numbered around the block, starting from an arbitrary corner and running consecutively either clockwise or counterclockwise. About 1890-1895 the system was changed to the style we know today.

Photo from Annual Report of the Board of Education and City Superintendent of Schools, 1905. Scan by Butte-Silver Bow Public Library.

A Token Tale

Photo by Dick Gibson

I recently got a Butte saloon token. I don’t collect these things—I collect way too many things already—but there are dozens of examples from Butte. I got it because I thought it would be cool to have one in my pocket when I do tours, something tangible from nearly 100 years ago to show tourists.

So I found a token within my price range ($15) that had a nice look, from a saloon that’s gone: the Crown Bar, 110 East Park Street.

Because there’s too much to learn, and I’m old enough to forget A LOT, it was not until I started researching the history of the bar that I rediscovered something I had already read: that the Crown Bar was the location where keno originated. For the full story, see George Everett’s article. Pete Naughton, stepfather to the Lyden brothers who eventually took the game to Nevada, ran the Crown Cigar Store (the Prohibition-era euphemism for a saloon) only in 1927 according to the city directories, so that must be the year of the events recounted in George’s article.

The Crown Bar, under that name, was listed only in 1916-1917, so presumably that’s the time of my brass token, worth a handsome 50¢ in trade, a high value that may mean it is from a later time (but tokens fell out of common use after Prohibition). Victor Swanson and Ben Christopherson ran the place then, offering “wines, liquors, and cigars.” During and after Prohibition the Crown was sometimes a “cigar store” and sometimes a café, continuing as a restaurant at least until 1957 when Etta Noe was a waitress there.

110 East Park occupied part of a three-story building that stood where the Edna LaCass Park (did you know it had a name?) is today, about the middle of the park along Park Street east of Wyoming.

100 years ago today

Photo from Library of Congress, HABS/HAER collection, 1979.

February 7 marks the centennial of Lutey’s Marketeria in the Stephens Block at Park and Montana. It was the first self-serve grocery store in the United States.

Lutey’s stores were established initially in Granite (now a ghost town) in 1889. Joseph Lutey moved the operation to Philipsburg in 1895 and finally into Butte in 1897, where he and his sons built it into one of the largest grocery chains in Montana.

Joseph Lutey was a Cornishman, born in the village of Morvah, about 8 miles from Land’s End at the far southwest tip of Great Britain, on Christmas Day 1849. He came from a family of yeoman farmers and tinners, inasmuch as this part of Cornwall boasts both agricultural country and tin mines. Joseph’s own background was in mining; he came to the United States in 1868 (age 19) and worked the mines of New York, New Jersey, Colorado, and Nevada before landing in Montana at Granite in 1887.

The first Butte store was at 47 West Park (the Thomas Block). Joseph died in 1911 and the business continued under his sons until about 1924. The Marketeria was prominently located at 142-144 West Park, at the corner of Montana in the Stephens Block that still marks this corner (Hilltop Market today). The ghost sign shown here is on the south façade of that building.

The 2007 Chinatown Archaeological Dig (financial support from the Butte URA; exhibit at the Mai Wah supported by the Montana State Historical Society and Mai Wah volunteers) uncovered a large broken crock advertising Lutey’s “fine pickles and pure vinegar” from the c. 1920 Chinese trash midden at the dig site, in the vacant lot south of Mercury and east of Colorado Street.

The Lutey’s self-service grocery was the model for Piggly Wiggly stores, the first widespread self-service chain in the U.S. You’ll find rich detail on the Lutey’s stores in Kent Lutey’s article “Lutey Brothers Marketeria,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 28 (1978): 50-57.

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.

Christmas in Butte, 1911 – #7

by Richard I. Gibson

Newspaper delivery people have long been independent entrepreneurs, and Butte’s newsies were no exception. For Dec. 24, 1911, the Butte Miner gave its Christmas Eve edition to the “little fellows” at no charge as a Christmas bonus. Each delivery boy probably made 5¢ on each paper sold that day, instead of his usual 2½¢. That was a fairly big deal in an era when 50¢ bought a nice meal at a boarding house.

Skates and other sporting equipment were hot items for Christmas 1911. The Montana Hardware Company’s sporting goods department offered men’s skates at prices from 75¢ a pair to $5.00 for “American club hockey, hardened full nickel” skates. You could get a baseball for 5¢. Montana Hardware, initially run by W.A. Clark’s brother J. Ross, was at 30-40 West Park in 1911, the 3-story Pennsylvania Building that stood just west of where the F&W Grand Building is today (the Military Recruiting Building, which dates to the 1930s).

Hazel Earle, Clairvoyant

“In all ages and in all times man has sought to pierce the veil of the future, and with the advance of civilization and progress the occult exercises a still greater fascination for mankind…”



By Richard I. Gibson

In Butte, Rev. Hazel Earle practiced as a spiritual medium in her office at 47 West Park in 1901. She was an ordained minister, at least as far as the First Spiritual Progressive National Association of Utah was concerned – they gave her a diploma – and she was legally allowed to perform marriages and funerals. Her effort led to “no less than twenty-seven professional men, including lawyers and physicians” being converted to a belief in spiritual phenomena.

Rev. Earle reportedly pegged the time of Queen Victoria’s death in 1901 to within 75 minutes, two years before the fact. She conducted public meetings Sunday and Wednesday evenings, apparently including “life readings that would satisfy the most skeptical.”

The Thomas Block where Earle held forth (probably upstairs) burned down in 1912, but its 1913 replacement still stands on West Park Street. Some of her large public evening sessions were also conducted a few doors west, in room 36 at the Washington Block, which is gone today. Hazel Earle lived at 201 E. Granite Street, the Jacobs House on the corner opposite the Court House. Among her seven local competitors was Madame Vera Zazell, a clairvoyant and palmist who lived in Room 5 of the Stephens Hotel in 1902. She also reportedly assisted with mining exploration: she “is positively unexcelled and more than a few individuals have acquired large fortunes through following her advice.”

Earle practiced in Salt Lake City (258 Main Street, Room 2) in the summer of 1898 before coming to Butte. Uncertain records suggest that she was from Fayette, Iowa, and that she died in 1923. Despite her powers, she was only in Butte about a year, listed only in the city directory for 1901.

Image and quotes from Western Resources Magazine: Butte at the Dawn of the 20th Century (1901). Digitized by Butte Public Library, at Butte Digital Memory Project.