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.

Merry Christmas from Butte, 1911

Butte Miner, December 1911

Christmas in Butte, 1911 – #1

by Richard I. Gibson

Hennessey’s, Symons, and Connell’s, Butte’s largest department stores, typically all ran full-page ads in the run-up to Christmas a hundred years ago. Each also appears to have generated new original artwork every day of the season, at least in December.

While Hennessey’s offered real moving picture machines that “show pictures the same as in theaters … complete with films, for either oil or electricity, at $2.00 and up,” across the corner at Connell’s you could buy a four-volume leather-bound copy of Don Quixote at $5.85 for the set, or a pair of boys’ school shoes for $1.48.

Symons, the “economists for the people” and the “toy headquarters for all Butte” carried “splendid sleds, good and strong, nicely painted” for 45¢ (marked down from $1.00), while a discriminating lady could get a nice $50.00 velvet coat on sale for $29.50.

The ads below are from the Butte Miner, December 1911. Click to enlarge.

Beer, copper, cigars, and golf

Click to enlarge

By Richard I. Gibson

I found a file folder with four old stock certificates from Butte in a basement in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1970, and I’ve been hauling them around ever since. Back then, I had no idea about the names – Butte-Argenta Copper Company, Montana-Continental Development Company, Keating Gold Mining Company. Butte Country Club was obviously the golf club. I kept them because they were cool, and they have been in a box buried in a closet until now. Now, with my “new” focus on Butte history, names like J.E. Oppenheimer and A.J. Davis and F. W. McCrimmon mean something to me: principal in the Symons Company, president of First National Bank, and a doctor with a fancy house at 313 W. Broadway, respectively. They’ve all signed one or more of these stock certificates, all of which are for shares owned by Joseph Oppenheimer.

The coolest one, in terms of appearance, is the certificate here, for 4,000 shares owned by Oppenheimer in the Butte-Argenta Copper Co. The company was organized Feb. 12, 1906 by Oppenheimer, Henry Mueller (president of the Centennial Brewing Co., and Butte mayor in 1891-92; his son Arthur had the Mueller Apartment building erected in 1917 as an investment), and others to exploit the old claims at Argenta, in the Pioneer Mountains northwest of Dillon.

The Argenta District is one of the oldest mining areas in Montana: mining started in 1865. Argenta had 1,500 people at its peak as well as the first smelter in Montana in 1866, but the town was essentially abandoned by 1874.  A short-lived rise in prices led Oppenheimer and company to invest in the Iron Mountain Mine in the Argenta District. Independent sources indicate that for a year or three, the mine yielded ore as rich as 16.5% copper, 18% lead, and 30 ounces of silver per ton (average, 12 oz). It also averaged $3 in gold per ton, and employed 35 men in 1909. Two shafts supported a 700-foot-long tunnel with two shorter crosscuts, mined using an 8-drill Ingersoll Rand air compressor. I have not verified the timing of the operation’s end, but it looks like the Argenta district was effectively abandoned again by about 1910.

The Butte-Argenta Company had its Butte offices at #3 Lewisohn Building, which stood along Hamilton Street and faced Granite. The parking lot there today resulted from the fire in 1978 that destroyed the Lewisohn and Silver Bow Blocks. Joseph Oppenheimer lived at 809 W. Broadway. Among his many interests in addition to being Treasurer of Symons Department Store and President of the Butte-Argenta Copper Company, Oppenheimer had his own J.E. Oppenheimer & Co., dealers in fine cigars. His corporate secretary in that venture was Sylven Hughes, who in 1899 had established the Olympia Brewery on Harrison Avenue where it crosses Silver Bow Creek. Joseph was the son of Elias and Mina Oppenheimer, commemorated in the stained glass of the B’nai Israel Synagogue. Thanks to Joseph’s sister’s marriage into the Symons family, the Oppenheimers established an important presence in the Symons merchant empire.
Andrew Jackson Davis, president of the First National Bank, countersigned the back of this certificate in 1908. He lived at 845 W. Granite Street, one of the “twin sisters” mansions.