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.

Butte City Hall, 24 E. Broadway

 

By Richard I. Gibson
       
Built: 1890. In use: 1890-1971.
Map

Butte’s exploding population – from about 4,000 in 1880 to 23,000 in 1890 – demanded bigger and better buildings for everything. This is Butte’s second city hall, replacing the 1884 structure at 116 W. Park (now the Jail House Coffee Shop). Mayor Henry Mueller, also an officer of the Centennial Brewery, oversaw the construction of this building. The jail was known as the “Butte Bastille” for its dungeon-like character. No temperature regulation meant that the inmates suffered temperatures ranging from 100°F and more adjacent to the building’s boiler behind the drunk tank, to chilly discomfort in the more distant cells. North of the furthest cells (“dungeon” and “interrogation cell”) police offices occupied the sub-sidewalk space on the north side of the city hall, visible through the hole in the Interrogation Cell. The ceilings in those offices, and in the dungeon, consist of ranks of bricks laid on a metal lattice frame.

Mortared unshaped granite boulders comprise much of the foundation, best seen at the corner of the long hallway along the cells.

The main level of the city hall originally held the fire department. The large arches adjacent to the front entrance on Broadway Street were doors through which horse-drawn fire wagons passed in response to calls. By 1900, an additional dedicated fire station had been built (today’s Archives building, 17 W. Quartz) to help attack the all-too-frequent fires that plagued the city despite a 29-page building ordinance enacted in 1893 that mandated brick and stone construction for most business blocks. The clock tower has been lowered by one section from its original height.

The jail was in use until 1971, when a suspicious (murder? suicide?) death by hanging at the shower stall compelled a decision to begin using the county jail (north of the county courthouse; currently the sheriff’s department offices), which was just 20 years younger but much more modern. The upper floors of the city hall were abandoned in 1977 when the governments of the city and county were merged and all operations moved to the county courthouse on Granite Street. The adaptive reuse of the building as a doctor’s office dates to 1999.

Photo by Richard Gibson.