971 North Main Street (Trinity Methodist Church)

By Linda Albright

Built: 1896
Map 

Thousands of skilled miners from Cornwall, England, immigrated to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century as English tin and copper mines played out. Many settled in Butte’s working-class communities. Centerville was home to equal numbers of Cornish, who were mostly Methodists, and Catholics from Ireland. There were two sets of businesses and two churches—one serving each group. By 1884, Centerville’s Cornish residents had formed a Methodist congregation; in 1885 they met in a small frame building on East Center Street.  


During the pastorate of Rev. Joel Vigus, the Butte and Boston Mining Company donated the land and this church was built in 1889. Together with the 4-room parsonage, the church cost $4,000, including electric lights donated by U.S. Senator (1895-99) and former Butte mayor Lee Mantle. Workers added brick veneer, a vestibule, a choir room, and dug a basement to accommodate a fellowship hall; all the extra work added about $5,000 to the cost, and the church was finally dedicated in 1896. The original stained glass windows were presented by M.J. Connell, a prominent Butte store owner. More recent stained glass windows are all dedicated, including some as recent as 1955. Much of the glass is of the opalescent variety.

View of Trinity Methodist through window of Mountain Con Hoist House

An enduring Cornish tradition is the pasty, a meat pie in a pastry envelope. Carried underground in dinner pails, miners lovingly called it a “letter from ’ome.” Trinity’s fellowship hall hosted many pasty dinners. The simple Gothic style “miner’s church” (in contrast to the “mine owners church, Mountain View) with its sturdy central tower recalls the Cornish miners and their families, far from home, who worshiped here.

Resources: Historic plaque by Montana Historical Society; Historic Stained Glass in selected houses of worship, Butte, Montana, by Richard I. Gibson and Irene Scheidecker (Butte CPR, 2006). Photos by Richard I. Gibson (the photo through the cracked Mountain Con window won an honorable mention in the National Park Service National Historic Landmarks photo contest in 2007-8, and was published as the 13th month in their 2009 calendar).

Grace Methodist Episcopal Church

By Richard I. Gibson

939 South Arizona
Built: 1889
Map

The Grace Methodist Episcopal congregation was organized in 1888 to serve South Butte, although a mission in South Butte had begun about 1879. They erected their church on the northwest corner of Arizona and Second Streets in 1889. Montana's second state governor, John Rickards (served 1893-97), was on Grace's initial board of directors. In 1910, membership was 140 under Pastor W.H. Pascoe, who lived at the church.

Over time, the address scheme changed here, from the 200 block of Arizona when it referred to the separate community of South Butte, to 945 and 939 South Arizona after the address became part of the Butte grid. The original 1889 church was significantly expanded and modified in 1902, including the addition of the corner spire.

Reformer Carrie Nation spoke here during her Butte visit in January 1910. Grace was one of the churches where Mrs. Nation did “a land-office business” selling her books and hatchet pins, although when she was on the streets of Butte and in saloons, her welcome was more ridicule than enthusiasm. After her lecture at the Grace Church, she marched up Arizona Street to the red-light district where she pleaded with working girls to give up their “life of shame,” but she left the A.B.C. Saloon (corner of Wyoming and Mercury) to the orchestra playing “What The Hell Do We Care.”

In 2013, the church is vacant and privately owned, with restoration in the offing.

Resources: Anaconda Standard and Butte Miner, January 26-29, 1910; Sanborn Maps; City Directories; Methodism on the Richest Hill on Earth, by Mike Parr. Photo by Richard Gibson.

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.