St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church

By Richard I. Gibson

101 S. Idaho
Built: 1899
Architect: William White
Map 

Click images to enlarge

1905

1901

Noted architect William White designed this majestic, multi-gabled church of stone and brick, built at a cost of $10,000 in 1899. Gothic lancet windows, stained glass, Romanesque arches, and wood tracery in the gable windows showcase White’s meticulous attention to fine detail. A steeple above the entry and pyramidal roof once crowned the two corner towers, visible in the 1905 sketch. Architect White was in partnership with A. Werner Lignell in 1900; their offices were in the Silver Bow Block (the old one, where the parking lot stands today just west of Main on Granite Street). In 1901 White’s independent office was in the Bee Hive Building on East Broadway (part of the NorthWestern Energy buildings today) and he was living at 1035 Caledonia.

1918

1918

By 1918, the church was owned by mortician (and later Silver Bow Sheriff) Larry Dugan, a sympathizer with the incendiary Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The building then housed the Butte Daily Bulletin (later known as the Butte Strike Bulletin), a radical newspaper voicing policies of the anti-Anaconda Nonpartisan League, published by William F. Dunne. On September 13, 1918, local police and federal troops under Major Omar N. Bradley raided the Bulletin, arresting twenty-four men and thwarting a miners’ strike.

It is likely but not certain that the stained glass windows were fabricated by the Butte Art Stained Glass Works. By 2013, the windows had been covered to help protect them, and in 2015, Uptown Works received a $5,000 grant from the Montana History Foundation to restore them.


In later years, Larry Dugan operated his mortuary here, and more recently Beverly Hayes ran a bridal shop in the building. The owner today is slowly restoring it.

Resources: Historic plaque by Montana Historical Society (the plaque says the raid took place on Sept. 14, but it was actually on the 13th); architectural inventory in Butte Archives; Sanborn maps; city directories (White advertisement, 1901); Butte Miner Dec. 17, 1905 (sketch with steeple); Butte Post Sept. 16, 1918 (Bradley photo); Butte Miner Sept. 14-16, 1918 (news article). Modern photos by Richard I. Gibson.

206-210-212 S. Idaho

210 S. Idaho (left), 212 (right), c. 1984

By Richard I. Gibson
Built: 1884-96
Status: lost (parking lot today)
Map 

210 S. Idaho

The east side of the 200 block of South Idaho Street, across from the old St. James Hospital, once held eight cottages (six of them two-story) and two 4-plexes (single stories plus basements). All are gone today, but three survived into the early 1980s.

206 S. Idaho was a porch-and-gable-roofed cottage begun before 1884, when the original front section stood flush with the sidewalk. A rear extension was added by 1890 and a second addition by 1900 made the house even longer. An early owner was Anthony Formel, who was a clerk at the A.W. Noble drug store (71 E. Park) in 1891-92; in 1893 he was listed as a dentist. His wife Kate ran the saloon at 130 South Main. In 1892, the Fornels sold the property to Victor Strasburger, a clerk at the Herman Strasburger furniture store at 80 West Park. The Strasburger clan lived largely at 124-126 West Granite in the 1890s, and it appears that they purchased this house to use as rental property.

210 S. Idaho was a one-story frame house constructed in 1896 for Mrs. Nellie E. Jones at a cost of $1,000. About 1899 a second was added to the main house and a single-story 8x16 kitchen was added to the rear; another rear addition was also added later. A large stable and wagon shed occupied much of the lot behind 210-212 S. Idaho.

212 S. Idaho was also built for Mrs. Nellie Jones about 1884-88. It stood very near, but not touching, 210 to the north. In contrast to the flat roof on 210, 212 had a sharp gable rooftop.

Resources: Architectural inventories in Butte Archives (sources of photos, which are tiny in the inventories hence the low resolution); Sanborn maps; city directories.

Shaffer Chapel

By Richard I. Gibson

Built 1901
602 S. Idaho at Platinum
Map

Shaffer Chapel was reportedly a gift to the African-American community from W.A. Clark. It was the second home to the African Methodist Episcopal congregation in Butte. That group built its first church at Idaho and Mercury (where the fire station is today) in 1892, but after they moved to Shaffer Chapel, the original building became home to the Baptist Bethel Church which also served African-Americans.

The building was vacant in 1951 but in recent years has been used as a day care center and as a church.

See also this Butte History blog post on Booker T. Washington.

Photo by Richard Gibson

St. John’s Episcopal Church, 15 N. Idaho

By Richard I. Gibson

Built: 1881. Restored 1918-21, enlarged 1936.
Map

Faced in Butte granite, this church is the oldest standing church in Butte, predating St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church by one year although the latter is the oldest religious community in town, initiated in 1866 as a mission. St. John’s is closely connected to Copper King W.A. Clark, whose mansion is just a block north. The parish hall and basement gymnasium were added in 1917. For three years after a 1918 fire gutted the interior, services were held in the parish hall, and not until 1931 was the stained-glass window behind the altar restored. That window was executed by Pompeo Bertini, stained-glass artist for the Cathedral of Milan, Italy, and is dedicated to Clark’s daughter Jessie, who died three weeks before her third birthday in 1878. The restoration of the window was paid for by Clark’s son William A., Jr., and Jessie’s twin sister, Catherine. Additional expansions have included enlarging the chancel and adding the chapel in 1936. Most of the stained glass in the side windows was manufactured by J & R Lamb Studios, of New York and New Jersey, and includes mining and patriotic motifs in addition to traditional religious imagery.

Reference: Historic stained glass in selected houses of worship, Butte, Montana, by R.I. Gibson and Irene Scheidecker, published by Butte Citizens for Preservation and Revitalization, 2006. Photos by Richard Gibson.

209-213 North Idaho Street

By Richard I. Gibson

Architect: Charles M. Prentice
Built: c. 1898
Map 

These three attached Italianate homes step up Idaho Street, reflecting a common accommodation to Butte’s topography. The middle unit upstairs (211½) was home to Butte Police Chief of Detectives Ed Morrissey, implicated in the murder of Frank Little in 1917. Morrissey probably murdered his wife here in 1919, and died in his bed here in 1922 of injuries suffered in a fight. The brick buildings were erected before 1900, probably about 1898.


Photo by Richard Gibson