58-60 West Galena Street (Paumie Block)

Built c. 1890
Present use: Uptown Post Office
Map 

Maria and Camille Paumie came to Montana from France in 1887. They constructed the west half of this building circa 1890, known as the Parisian House; its furnished rooms were rented out under various proprietors. The bottom floor was the Parisian Dye Works, a dye house and dry-cleaning business run by the Paumies who also lived in the building. Paumie’s was one of Montana's first steam dry-cleaners. Located on the fringe of Butte’s notorious red light district, much of Paumie’s cleaning business was with the prostitutes who worked and lived just to the east.

Cast iron storefront (1890)

The business expanded in 1898 with the addition of the east half of the building. Camille Paumie died in 1899 and Maria continued the business until the 1920s. Paumie’s Parisian Dye Works later had different owners who retained the Paumie name. The original three-story masonry building, with its fine cast-iron storefront (crafted by the Montana Iron Works, of Butte) and metal “eyebrow” lintels, appears much as it did in the late 1890s. A complex of interconnected extensions link this address with 110 S. Dakota.

In 1928, Ludger Michaud, Jr., was President of the Paumie Dye House and dry cleaning establishment. He (or perhaps his father, of the same name; the father died Feb. 24, 1917, age 64, and was a smelterman at the Parrot Smelter for much of his time in Butte) worked there as a cleaner in 1910.

Resources: Modified from historic plaque text by Montana Historical Society; City Directories.  Photos by Richard Gibson.

327 West Galena Street (B'nai Israel Temple)

Built: 1903-04
Map

Butte’s ethnic diversity is well represented in this beautiful synagogue, dedicated February 26, 1904. The Butte Jewish community dates to 1875, and Butte’s first mayor, Henry Jacobs, was Jewish. Jacobs immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the 1850s, fought for the South in the Civil War, made his way north in the 1860s, and was elected mayor in 1879.

After the Jewish community split into one reform and two orthodox groups, this temple was built for use by the reform congregation; the orthodox congregations continued for a few years but were ultimately disbanded. The three-story masonry building features a corner bell tower with an onion dome roof, an ornately corbelled front gable with rosette window beneath, and semicircular brick arches. This is the oldest synagogue in Montana still in use as a synagogue (the one in Helena is slightly older, but no longer serves as a house of worship) and this is one of only a few synagogues in the United States still in use that has the Moorish (onion-dome) architecture. Prior to its construction in 1903-04, the group worshiped in the Carpenter’s Union Hall and at the Mountain View Methodist Church.

The land was provided to the Jewish community in 1885 by the Northern Pacific Railway. Stained glass windows commemorate Elias and Mina Oppenheimer, German immigrants whose sons Joseph and Henry were partners with George Symons in Symons’ Dry Goods, a store that eventually became one of Butte’s most important department stores.

Resources: Historic plaque by Montana Historical Society; Congregation B’nai Israel Temple, by Richard Gibson, in Historic Stained Glass in selected houses of worship, Butte, Montana, published by Butte Citizens for Preservation and Revitalization, 2006. Photos by Richard Gibson.