Saturday, March 9, 2013

41-45 East Park (Owsley Block #2)



Built 1889
Map

A pair of two-story projecting bays, rounded balconies, and slender columns with ornate bracketing give this former hotel a delightful nineteenth-century charm. Built by early settler and former Butte mayor William Owsley, the Owsley Block housed the Hoffman Hotel (which offered rooms to let on the upper two floors) and ground-floor commercial space. A variety of early tenants included a drugstore, liquor store, restaurant, the Scotch Woolen Mills tailor shop, and Albert Keene shoes. In 1929, Hoffman’s still offered upstairs lodging. The bays have been faithfully restored to their turn-of-the-twentieth-century appearance and “mock” windows painted on the building’s sides indicate original window placement.

From historic plaque by Montana Historical Society. Photo by Richard Gibson.

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