Grand Hotel (Wheeler Block)

By Richard I. Gibson

124 W. Broadway
Built: 1916-17
Map

The building known as the Grand Hotel began as a three-story labor temple in 1915-16, intended to be a meeting place for plumbers and other unions. To cover debts, the unions sold it to Butte lawyer and U.S. District Attorney (later U.S. Senator from Montana) Burton K. Wheeler, who added two stories by the time it was finished in 1917.

The façade is marked by terra cotta tiles and cornice, dressed stone columns, and decorative prism glass bricks in the transom level and in the central stair windows. Others managed the Grand Hotel for Wheeler for about 15 years until he sold it, but it continued as a hotel until 1989. A dance school conducted classes here in the early 1940s.

A promoter bought the Grand in 1989 and began to develop it as a boxing training center, with lodgings on the upper floors. In the summer of 1991 fireworks started a fire that was quickly controlled, but the following January a fire consumed most of the fifth floor and destroyed the roof. The building stood empty for about three years and reverted to the city-county of Butte-Silver Bow for unpaid taxes, and a new roof was installed. Various owners had it until 2011 when Chuck and Lyza Schnabel purchased the building and renovated the basement for the Quarry Brewery and tap room, which opened on Sept. 29, 2011. The ground floor was renovated in 2012-13. Plans for the upper floors include bed and breakfast, condos, and private usage.

Note: the photo above is from 2011 before three new store fronts were renovated on the ground floor.

Resources: Architectural inventory; Sanborn maps; Historic Uptown Butte, by John DeHaas, Jr. (1977). Photo by Richard I. Gibson. Text modified from write-up by Gibson in Butte CPR 2012 Dust-to-Dazzle tour guide.

Butte Brewery

By Richard I. Gibson

218-220 N. Wyoming, at Quartz
Business began 1885
Status: lost circa 1965

The Butte Brewery was established by Henry Muntzer in 1885, nine years after Butte’s first brewery, the Centennial. Beginning in the late 1890s, managers expanded production and built or re-built many of the brewery’s buildings on North Wyoming between Granite and Copper Streets. Capacity was expected to grow to 125 barrels per day in 1901, and the new malthouse was to handle 10,000 pounds per day. The brewery initially used water flowing in the stream that came out of Dublin Gulch, but by the early 1890s, that stream was filled and covered, and the brewery was on city water.

The main building in the photo here was constructed in the late 1890s and included beer cellars in the basement of the 2-story section, with the fermenting floor on the ground level and lodge rooms on the second floor. The rear 3-story section held coolers, hop storage, a wash house, and the cooper shop. Multiple additional buildings covered the grounds, ranging from a bottling facility to stables.

The building at left (224-226 N. Wyoming) with the decorative cornice was the Brewery Saloon, with the brewer’s residence above. Later that second-floor space became a hand-ball court.

By 1910, T.J. Nerny was President. He got his start with the Citizens Brewery of Chicago in the 1890s, and came to Butte by about 1905. His home in 1910, when he was President of the Butte Brewery, was at 301 N. Alabama, and John Harrington, the brewery’s Secretary-Treasurer, lived up the block at 318 N Alabama. In 1917, with statewide Prohibition coming in 1919, the brewery promoted its Eureka Beer as “Liquid food for temperate people.” The Butte Brewery was the only one in Butte that survived Prohibition, by producing malted soft drinks and other beverages (using the Checo brand), but it did not survive the economic downturn that affected Butte in the 1960s and 1970s. They were out of business about 1963 and the brewery buildings were demolished soon after. Today the location is occupied by the Rodeway Inn (Capri Motel) (map). For 44 years, Butte did not have a brewery, until Quarry Brewing opened in 2007.

In 2013, a new brewery is under construction on Butte’s east side that will resurrect the Butte Brewery name and brands.

Image sources: scans by Butte-Silver Bow Public Library. Brewery, from A Brief History of Butte, Montana, by Harry C. Freeman, 1901. T.J. Nerny, Vice-President Butte Brewing Company, Butte, MT, image taken from p. 107 of Cartoons and Caricatures of Men in Montana (1907) by E.A. Thomson. Reference: Steve Lozar, "1,000,000 Glasses a Day: Butte's Beer History on Tap," Montana: the Magazine of Western History 56/4 (2006): 46-55. Additional resources: Sanborn maps, city directories.

123-125 North Main Street

123 North Main Street
Built: pre-1884
Architect: Henry Patterson (1895 modification)
Map

Cast-iron pilasters, a metal cornice, interior hardwood paneling and a pressed metal ceiling are reminders of the varied remodelings of this early commercial building, constructed before 1884. The saloon and billiard parlor that occupied the first floor here in the 1880s and early 1890s was the uptown outlet for the Centennial Brewing Company, largest in Butte. The brewery was located along Silver Bow Creek, west of where Montana Street crosses it today.

In 1895, architect H. M. Patterson remodeled the building for $5,000, adding a cast-iron storefront. By 1910, Clerke’s Clothing Store occupied both this building and the one next door. Store president Samuel Clerke installed the metal cornice joining the two buildings. During the 1930s at this address Butte’s immensely popular Spokane Cafe served a sizable clientele. The building’s most significant use, however, occurred in 1905. During that year the Woman’s Protective Union (W.P.U.), predecessor of today’s Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Union and the nation’s first union for women, met upstairs. This pivotal organization was founded in Butte in 1893 so that women would not “…be behind their brothers in demanding their rights.”

125 North Main Street
Built: pre-1884
Architect: Henry Patterson (1895 modification)

Like its immediate neighbors, this is one of Butte’s earliest substantial buildings. Dating before 1884, it documents various periods of use through a distinct sequence of visible alterations. The ground floor commercial space was originally occupied by a jeweler and a tailor. Furnished rooms were available at the back and upstairs, accessed by an interior stairway. The upper windows with their graceful brick arches are typical of this earliest period. A dry goods/notions and millinery shop next shared the commercial storefront.

Butte architect H. M. Patterson designed a new façade in 1895, connecting this address with the building to the south. The cast-iron pilasters of that remodeling remain visible next door. In 1900, an inner doorway opened into J. V. Harmon’s saloon at 123 North Main. Clothing store owner Samuel Clerke installed the metal cornice in 1910, further linking numbers 123 and 125. By 1930, Hoenck’s Fur Shop occupied this building, once again separating the two addresses. Art Deco style metal sheathing, added circa 1940 and since removed, further chronicled the building’s alterations as its function changed over time.

Like other buildings in this block, the backs of these two were damaged by a major fire in 1889, and the buildings were declared total losses, but they actually survived. This block, excluding the north and south corners, is among the oldest intact sections of the Butte business district.

Modified from historic plaques by Montana Historical Society. Photo by Richard Gibson.