Iona Cafe (16 South Main Street)

Built: 1914-16
Map

The Gagnon Realty Company constructed a single-story building on this site in 1914, adding the second floor before 1916. Mosaic tiles at the entrance proclaim the business of its early tenant, baker Joseph Boulet, who moved his Iona Cafe and Baking Company here from Park Street in 1915. In 1917, the Iona became the State Cafe, and so it remained through the 1960s. An ornate metal cornice, decorative brickwork, transomed windows, and a sign for "Flor de Baltimore" painted on the north wall recall another era. Underneath the building is an excellent example of the subterranean passageways that crisscross the city. These passageways delivered steam heat to downtown businesses.

See also this Butte History blog post.

Modified from historic plaque by Montana Historical Society. Photo by Jet Lowe, 1979 HABS/HAER survey, Library of Congress.

Tony’s Tin Shop & Myra Brothel, 108 S. Arizona

By Richard I. Gibson

Built: c. 1914- c. 1925
Status: Vacant, used as museum for historic tours
Map

The oldest section of this building is the front 12 feet of the first floor, built as Tony’s Tin Shop in 1914-15. The shop grew to the east in at least two additions before 1920, when the second floor was added as a small boarding house. By 1925, the upper floor was rented to a couple who lived in the eastern extension of the second floor and who operated the front portion as a brothel according to family history. The family – Tony and Mary (Myra) Cononica, lived in the add-on section east of the first-floor tin shop.

Original elements of the building are preserved because it remains in the same family; the tin shop has never served any other role. The boarding house/brothel upstairs is relatively small, and would have been a fairly upscale brothel, falling somewhere between the high-class parlor houses and low-end shacks called cribs.

Tours of this building are available from Old Butte Historical Adventures.

Photo by Richard Gibson.