220-224 N. Main (Chambers Block, Anaconda Company Pay Office)

By Linda Albright
Built: pre-1884
Map

In 1884-85 the building was occupied by Hoge Brownlee & Company Bank in the northwest corner of the first floor; the rest of the first floor contained W. R. Kenyon & Company Hardware & Mining Machinery. It had a stone basement with its own boiler in the southeast corner of the basement. The building was owned by Marcus Daly in the mid-1880s and later by Donahue & Moyer; in 1900, the Daly Bank & Trust Company owned and occupied the building. John D. Ryan was bank president and John R. Toole served as vice president. This is the location where Ryan, later president of the Anaconda Company as well as the Montana Power Company (see this link to his house) became acquainted with Marcus Daly. 

By 1908, this block was owned by and housed the Anaconda Copper Mining Company’s pay office. Also known as the Mines Office (first floor rear), it also contained the ACM purchasing department on the second floor. In later years, the telephone switchboard and operators were located on the second floor at the rear of the building.

By the 1950s, the ACM still used this building for offices, but the pay office had moved around the corner to the adjacent building to the east (18 E. Quartz St., at left in photo at top).

During the labor troubles of the 1910s, the pay office was dynamited Sunday, July 6, 1919. “Little damage was done,” according to the Engineering & Mining Journal, but the New York Times reported “an iron grating was blown against a building across the street, narrowly missing a street car heavily loaded with miners. The damage is estimated at $5,000.” Windows were broken in 6 nearby stores.

Sources: Architectural inventory; Engineering & Mining Journal, Vol. 108, no. 2; New York Times July 6, 1919; Sanborn maps. Photo by Richard I. Gibson.

327 and 331 North Wyoming

327 (left) and 331 North Wyoming

By Richard I. Gibson

Built: pre-1884
Map

These two houses both predate 1884, making them among the oldest survivors in Butte. A third house, a plastered 2-story home built before 1888, once occupied the lot to the south at 323.

An early resident of 327 was John A. Montgomery, a tailor who had come to Butte from England, and his wife Ella (from Wisconsin), their daughter, and a lodger who was also a tailor. It is a wood frame house.

331 N. Wyoming was originally owned by Marcus Daly, who sold it in February 1891 to Mrs. Mary (Margaret) Weed, widow of Fitzgerald Weed, for $2,500. Mrs. Weed was still living there in 1900. In 1910, miner John Kennedy from Ireland lived here with his wife, daughter, cousin, and two more lodgers. The house is brick veneer over wood frame, with later stucco and siding added. It originally had a double bay front, but after 1916 the bays were removed and the porch added.

These two houses have seen a lot of Butte history. North across Copper Street from 331 was the Washoe Mine in 1884, closed by 1888 but still there for several years thereafter. The corner of Copper and Wyoming is near the foot of the Anaconda Road, where thousands of men poured down from the Hill at every shift change. A saloon stood directly across Wyoming from 331, on the southeast corner of Copper and Wyoming. In 1884, an early Miner’s Union Hall was a half-block south of these houses at the corner of Wyoming and Quartz, and across the street and slightly down Wyoming Street, the Butte Brewery, Finlander Hall, and Mrs. Byrnes’ Boarding House stood—the latter the site of Frank Little’s abduction in 1917.

Sources: Architectural inventories, Sanborn maps, city directories. Photo by Richard I. Gibson.

Marcus Daly Statue

By Richard I. Gibson

Sculptor: Augustus St. Gaudens
Date: 1906, moved 1941
Map

The statue of Marcus Daly, in Park Street at the edge of the Montana Tech campus, celebrates one of Butte’s Copper Kings. Irish-born Daly (born December 5, 1841, emigrated from County Cavan in 1856) came to Butte from Nevada’s Comstock Lode. He worked for the Walker Brothers at the Alice Silver Mine in Walkerville, where he made enough money to invest for himself in the Anaconda Mine, on the Butte Hill. In 1882, with demand for copper soaring to provide wiring for telephones and electricity, Daly’s discovery of the Anaconda copper vein marked the beginning of one of the largest mining companies in the world. Daly died November 12, 1900.

The statue was commissioned in 1902 and completed in 1906 by Augustus St. Gaudens (1848-1907, and also Irish-born), designer of the U.S. twenty-dollar gold piece. The Daly statue was the last significant work of art produced by St. Gaudens; he died about a month before the statue’s unveiling September 2, 1907. It stood in North Main Street near the U.S. Post Office (today’s Federal Building) from 1907 until June 25, 1941 when it was moved to its present location. The move was spurred by vehicles colliding with the statue's base on Main Street, and was sponsored by the Butte Pioneer Club and Butte Citizens Committee, but paid for by Mrs. Marcus Daly.

Photo (of statue when it was on Main Street) by Arthur Rothstein, 1939, Farm Security Administration, LC-USF33-003098-M5 (public domain, from Library of Congress).