22 East Quartz

by Linda Albright

Built c. 1915
Map

In 1915, James E. Murphy owned this building.  It was built by Nelson & Pederson to be used as a garage.  The cost of the original construction was $13,500. It had a concrete first floor and hollow tile second, steam heat, electric lights and a wood truss roof.

In 1916 it was Perham & Riley's Garage with a capacity of 44 cars.  From 1918 through 1927, it was known as the Montana Cadillac Company.  In 1928, the name changed to the Quartz Street Garage.  From 1929 through 1934, it was known as the Alemite Quartz Street Garage, and was managed by the Bartsch Brothers.

In 1942,  William H. and Jack H. Harkins opened the Harkins Bottling Company.  The business included making and bottling soda pop; distributing the soda and numerous snacks to businesses around the Butte area.  The business was truly a family-run operation as the brothers’ wives took turns working in the office.  Harkins Wholesale and Bottling Company existed until the early 1980s.

The lot where this building stands held a small frame lodging house ("furnished rooms" - but it was so small, there couldn't have been many rooms) from before 1884 until the middle 1890s. It appears that this was a vacant lot for close to 20 years until the garage was constructed. 

834 West Quartz

Built: 1897
Map 

As its population tripled in the 1890s, Butte began its transformation from a mining camp to a small city. The percentage of married men grew by 10 percent, and local builders worked busily to fulfill the increasing demand for single-family homes. Carpenter John Shackleton constructed several, almost identical cross-gable residences, including two on the 800 block of Broadway and one on this lot.

Built in 1897, the two-story, wood-frame residence was home to Edward and Alice Holden in 1900. Edward worked as telegraph editor for the Butte Miner, a daily newspaper. Ella Heuser and her husband Edward, a drugstore owner, purchased the residence circa 1908, and were likely responsible for building the one-story rear addition. By 1920, the home belonged to Jacob and Cora Pincus. Jacob had a varied career as a jeweler, watchmaker, and tobacco merchant. While he was "industrious," "trustworthy," and one of the city's "most conservative and substantial" businessmen by his own account, others remembered him as a "black sheep… [who] never did anything right." The Pincuses lived here until Jacob's death in 1942.

Text from Historic Plaque by Montana Historical Society. Photo by Richard I. Gibson.

833 W. Quartz (Soroptimist House)

Built: c. 1895
Architect: H.M. Patterson
Map

Butte architect H. M. Patterson designed this brick home for attorney John Colter in the 1890s. Semicircular windows in the gables, stone lintels, a prominent portico supported by Tuscan columns, and an inviting front porch ornament the residence. Henry Muntzer, founder of the Butte Brewery, purchased the property in 1901 for his wife Mary and their eight children. Family members lived here into the 1940s, adding the east-side addition before 1916.

Butte’s Soroptimist Club purchased the residence in 1947 for $5,500. The charitable women’s organization campaigned tirelessly for funds to transform the house into a temporary “receiving home for dependent, neglected, abused, or abandoned children.” With volunteer help from Butte union members, the Soroptimists added four new rooms to the rear of the building, repaired the porches, updated the wiring, installed fire escapes, added a third bathroom, carpeted the floors, and built a playground. In its first ten years of operation, the home cared for over 1,700 children. After the Soroptimists moved in 1970, the residence fell into disrepair. It was rescued by Steve and Janet Hadnagy, who spent years restoring it to a single-family home.

Text from Historic Plaque by Montana Historical Society (Martha Kohl). Photo by Richard I. Gibson (Anselmo mine in right background). For more information about the Soroptimist House, see Motherlode, by Janet L. Finn and Ellen Crain (2005).

Murray Hospital annex/Caroline McGill’s Office

By Richard I. Gibson

58 West Quartz (original address 36 W. Quartz)
Built: 1910
Map

This building was constructed in 1910 as a three-story structure as the nurses’ home and laundry for the Murray Hospital that stood across Quartz Street (see this Butte History article for an image of the hospital, now gone).

Three-story building in 1910.

It was valued at $35,000 in 1910; the fourth floor was added before 1916. Dr. T.J. Murray also lived here, and additional apartments occupied floors 2 and 3; the nurses lived on the 4th floor and the laundry was in the basement. By 1951, the ground floor was still a doctor’s office, and apartments filled all the upper floors.

An attached garage originally occupied the lower level of the 2-story addition to the east, which still stands. The main building is of reinforced concrete construction with brick veneer walls and a copper railing at the top of the third floor, originally a cornice at the top of the building. There was a tunnel beneath Quartz Street connecting the basement laundry to the main hospital across the street; it was “not used” by 1951.

Dr. Thomas J. Murray was born in Tennessee in 1855, and graduated from Jefferson Medical College in 1879. He came to Butte in 1885; over time, he served as the Vice-President of the American Medical Association, President of the State Board of Medical Examiners, and President of the Silver Bow Club. He was actively involved in planning and construction of the Silver Bow Club’s new 1906 building. After about 1918, Murray lived at 401 West Granite. He died in 1930.

About 1919, this building was purchased by Dr. Caroline McGill, Montana’s first female physician. She maintained her clinic here and also lived in the building along with the tenants. Among her clients were many of Butte’s Chinese, who often paid for McGill’s services in barter, often with Chinese porcelain. McGill’s collection is now in the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman.

McGill (1879-1959) was born in Ohio and grew up in Missouri, earning a doctorate in anatomy at Missouri State University in 1908. She studied medicine in Europe before coming to Butte to work for the Murray Hospital in 1911. She received her M.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1916 and came back to Butte, where she practiced until 1956. McGill purchased the 320 Ranch in the Gallatin River Canyon, which is today a guest ranch.

This building’s connection to both Murray and McGill, together with its long history as a medical facility and its unique copper railing, make it a significant historical resource. In 2013 it is used for offices and residences.

Sources: Architectural inventories, Sanborn maps, city directories. Modern photo by Richard I. Gibson; historic photo from Anaconda Standard, Dec. 18, 1910; Murray photo from architectural inventory file at Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. Web resources: DR. CAROLINE M. McGILL (1879–1959) ; A true pioneer: Caroline McGill, by Rob Chaney (1997) ; Caroline McGill, by Ellen Baumler.

216 East Quartz

Built: c. 1893
Map 

When John Harrington sold this lot in 1888, he reserved the right to mine within twenty feet of the surface—without reinforcing his mine with timbers. Understandably, the purchasers, miner Con Ambrose and his wife Sarah, built a functional, no-frills gable-front-and-wing residence in the early 1890s. Deeds like this one provided a disincentive to invest heavily in a home, and for good reason. Mining took precedence as the nearby Berkeley Pit—once home to crowded neighborhoods—demonstrates.

In 1894, the Ambroses sold the home to Philip Goodwin, city circulation manager for the Butte Miner newspaper. Most of the other early owners were miners, many of whom worked at the nearby Parrot Mine. Among them were John Wallace, a miner from Tennessee who lived here in 1910 with his wife Bessie, a boarder, and a lodger, and Maurice Condon, whose family purchased the residence in 1912. Maurice died in 1925 at age fifty-two of pneumonia, one of the many lung ailments common to miners working amid dynamite, damp, and dust. After his death, his widow, Annie, worked as a clerk and housekeeper. She lived here with her son, also a miner, into the 1930s.

Although this is the only house surviving on this part of East Quartz Street, the area was once crammed with homes and people, likely with a population of more than 200 in one block alone. See this Butte History post for a report on an 1897 New Year’s Eve party just across the street from this house, and more about the neighborhood.

216 E. Quartz was almost straight across the alley from 223-225 East Granite.

Sources: Historic plaque by Montana Historical Society; architectural inventory; Sanborn maps; city directories. Photo from architectural inventory, by Mary Murphy, c. 1985.

211 West Quartz (Bridget Shea Residence)

Built: 1885
Map

Tucked into the steep slope of a Butte hill, this wonderfully preserved four-square cottage well represents Butte’s working backbone. Real estate mogul Josiah Beck built the modest home in 1885 over the Silver King Lode. Charles Eltinge, its first owner, was a correspondence clerk for W. A. Clark. The Eltinge family was strangely connected to America’s first famous female impersonator, William Julian Dalton, who was a neighbor and chum of Eltinge’s son. The performer took Julian Eltinge as his stage name.

By 1916, James and Bridget Shea owned the home. Widowed during the influenza epidemic of 1918, Bridget raised four small children working as a waitress. She began a 25-year career in 1930 as business agent for the Women’s Protective Union, likely having experienced this need firsthand. The Shea family owned the house until 1978. Unusual decorative lattice and diamond openings at the porch base add individuality to the standard vernacular design. Original varnished woodwork, French doors, and hardwood floors grace the interior. Bridget’s carefully tended garden of shrub roses, lilacs, and lavender are a fragrant and lasting legacy.

The house was built as a small four-square home, but a kitchen was added on the north side before 1888, and further additions between 1900 and 1916 created a long rectangular building. The front porch was enclosed in the 1930s. This block was Irish for at least 50 years; the shamrock and “IRA” for Irish Republican Army, painted in the basement, date to 1932. Basement wall construction is diverse, including unmortared rubble, brick, granite blocks, and granite bedrock.

Resources: Historic plaque by Montana Historical Society; Vernacular Architecture Forum Guidebook, Butte, Montana, 2009, 211 West Quartz Street, by Richard Gibson; Architectural inventory; Sanborn Maps; city directories. Photo by Richard I. Gibson.

208 West Quartz

By Richard I. Gibson

Built: pre 1884
Map

This four-square house, a typical workingman’s cottage one block north of William Clark’s Copper King Mansion, was built as a 1½-story structure before 1884, set back from the street. By 1888, the two-story section was added to the north, along the street. It is a wood frame structure with a stone basement.

Sarah Knox, widow of Thomas, was the original (1884) owner. She was taking boarders into furnished rooms as early as 1884, when the address here was 59 W. Quartz. Sarah, born in 1816, died November 20, 1900.

In 1914 the Trueworthy family began a long tenure here. Edward Trueworthy was a miner at the Tuolumne Mine in 1917; he worked at various mines over the years, including the Butte Main Range. His brother Fred, a carpenter at the Black Rock Mine in 1917, also lived here in the 1910s.

By 1928, Ed Trueworthy, his wife Mayme, and their children Charles, Edward Jr., and Margery were here, along with a boarder, John J. Dolan, a miner at the Etta Mine. Ed was working then as a machinist or mechanic at the Montana Auto & Garage, 202 East Broadway. Edward Jr. continued to live here with his wife Jessie until about 1969. In 1964, they still had a boarder, Dennis Abeyta.

The vacant lot to the west of this home is unusual in that it never held a house. It is the site of one of several shafts of the Silver King Mine. There was a house on the corner of Idaho Street, just west of the mineyard, which was only one lot wide.

Resources: Architectural Inventory, Sanborn maps, city directories. Photo by Richard I. Gibson.

Quartz Street Fire Station

2008

17 West Quartz
Built: 1900
Map
Web Site (BSB Public Archives)

1901

A catastrophic fire in 1879 destroyed all evidence of Butte’s first commercial district. Wooden buildings were subsequently outlawed on Main Street, but even so, fire has altered the commercial landscape in every decade from 1879 to the present. This indispensable community fire hall, Butte’s second, completed in 1900, served as the Butte headquarters until the 1970s. The station, with its three garage bays, housed the fire chief and twenty-two men. A corrugated metal tower above the roof at the rear was used for hanging hoses.

Since 1981 the building has housed the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. Major renovation of the interior in 2009-10 and addition of a state-of-the-art archival vault to the east made the Archives among the finest in the United States, venue for more than 4,000 visitors per year researching their ancestors and other aspects of Butte history.

The fire station has been called one of the most haunted buildings in Butte. Before the 2010 renovation, the fire bells—disconnected for decades—could be heard to ring in the basement.

Text modified from historic plaque by Montana Historical Society. Additional references: The Haunting of Butte's Quartz Street Fire Station, by Ellen Baumler, in Montana, The Magazine of Western History, Vol 52, No 1, Spring 2002; and Souvenir history of the Butte Fire Department, by Peter Sanger, Chief Engineer, November 1901 (source of historic photo, scanned by Butte Public Library). Modern photo (2008) by Richard Gibson.