Apex Hotel

By Richard I. Gibson

429 West Park Street
Built: 1918
Map

1918

Built by William Robertson for the Tait brothers, this residential hotel is typical of many erected during Butte's population explosion in the 1910s. John Tait was a dentist in 1910, in partnership with A.H. Cole with offices at 48 W. Park. John’s brother George was a clerk for the Anaconda Company, boarding at 844 W. Silver. By 1914 the Taits were evidently successful enough to branch into real estate, hiring William Robertson to erect the Tait Hotel on East Broadway that year; John lived at the Tait Hotel in 1915-17. In 1918 John's office was on the sixth floor of the Phoenix Building and George was a teller at Miners Savings Bank, and both lived at the Apex once it was completed. In 1928, George was out of the picture, John had moved his office to room 103 in the Pennsylvania Block, four blocks east of the Apex Hotel, and his wife Hattie managed the Apex.

The Tait family home in the 1890s, where I believe John and George lived as children, was at 13 West Copper, next door to a Chinese Laundry. It is a vacant lot today. Their father Robert was a contractor and a carpenter.

In 1923 the five-year-old hotel's residents included Mollie Allen, high school teacher; Juanita Daniels, clerk at the Leggat Hotel; J.J. Delphin, manager at the Ground Gripper Shoe Store at 112 W. Park; Kathryn Dowd, bookkeeper at the C.O.D. Laundry; and H.R. Doyle, a concrete loader.

So far as I can tell, Dr. John Tait was only directly associated with the Tait Hotel on Broadway Street until 1918 when the Apex was built. Beginning in 1917, he is no longer listed as the proprietor of the Tait Hotel, which was run by Mrs. Niconor Swanson.

Resources: Architectural inventories; Butte Miner, March 24, 1918 (historic photo); city directories; Sanborn maps. Modern photo by Richard I. Gibson.

The Five-Mile House

By Richard I. Gibson

5100 Harrison Avenue
Built: c. 1905
Map

The highway out of Butte to the east went south, along what is now Harrison Avenue and ultimately over Pipestone Pass to Whitehall. The route was marked by inns – Mile Houses – at least at 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, and 18 miles from the heart of uptown Butte, the last one about five miles east of the Continental Divide. The two most famous survivors are the Nine Mile, in Thompson Park, and the Five Mile, at 5100 Harrison.

An inn, with a café and saloon, was probably at this location by the late 1880s and certainly by the early 1890s. The property was owned in the mid-1890s by ticket broker, cigar wholesaler, and later real estate tycoon Adolph Pincus. In 1896, all the personal property in the place, owned by one Ida Au Claire, was offered in security to Pincus for a loan of $855, which he carried at 2½% interest per month. The property included 8 horses, three wagons, two pair of bobsleds, and 150 cords of wood.

The inn on this site in the earliest 1900s was a resort and venue for prize fights “which could not be pulled off in Butte.” “Kid Foley” and “Kid Opie” both boxed there in lightweight bouts in 1901, and the place was well known as a venue for large private parties. Because of the proximity to the cemeteries out Harrison Avenue, it was also a frequent stopping-place for after-burial gatherings.

The original hostelry burned to the ground November 13, 1902. A kitchen fire spread, and the proprietor’s wife (Mrs. Joseph Ethier) reportedly suffered serious burns and injuries when she jumped from a second-floor window. The building was a total loss, estimated at $3,000.

Frank Cash, 1920

Frank Cash (1858-1931) was an Austrian immigrant by way of New York. He came to the U.S. about 1886 and was in Butte by 1891, and after a short stint as a miner he began to work as a saloonkeeper. In 1898 Mr. Cash lived in Meaderville working as a laborer, but by 1900 he was operating a saloon at his residence at 21 Lincoln in Meaderville. The next year he had a new saloon at 1260 Talbot, the continuation of Mercury Street. His saloon was at Talbot and Watson, with the Monitor Mine in the back yard and the massive Braund Boarding House across the street (Lost Butte, p. 34-35). The Pennsylvania Mine was just a few blocks straight north. His saloon, with a restaurant in the rear, came to be called the Cash House. This area is all in the Berkeley Pit or eradicated by its margin today.

About 1905 Frank Cash moved out Harrison Avenue to a house and saloon across from the present Five Mile House, which was built probably by 1904 or 1905. In 1906, family lore says the flip of a silver dollar allowed him to buy the Five Mile (if it had gone the other way, the owner of the Five Mile would have bought him out), and the family had many decades of connection to the place thereafter. In addition to managing the Five Mile House, Frank was the regional distributor for the Wurlitzer Music Company in Butte; one transaction in 1914 grossed $1,550 in a sale of a violin, flute, and piano.

Frank left Butte when prohibition started in 1919, moving to the Bitterroot Valley where he established a famous $100,000 ranch on 1,000 acres along Skalkaho Creek where he raised registered shorthorn cattle.

After Frank left Butte, his daughter Louise Kall managed the Five Mile even after divorcing her husband Martin Kall, and her daughter (Louise) and granddaughter (Donna Anderson) ran the place well into the 2000s.

Resources: excellent basic research and family history by Carl Jones (great-great grandson of Frank Cash), Butte High School, Ann Cote Smith Essay Contest, 2003; Butte Archives MC494-Box 1-FF 006 including Pincus chattel mortgage; Archives VF 0875.2; Anaconda Standard Nov. 13, 1902; Anaconda Standard July 4, 1920 (Frank Cash photo); Anaconda Standard Feb. 23, 1931; The 1919 Blue Book road guide for travelers; Sanborn maps; city directories. Building photo by Richard I. Gibson.

Schumacher Building (25 S. Montana)

By Richard I. Gibson

Built: 1919
Map

Anaconda Standard, Nov 2, 1919

In 1919 H.J. Schumacher had this 36x32-foot business block constructed as a showroom and garage for the Buick Motor Company. It replaced two 2-story duplexes on Montana Street and a single-story home on Galena. Arnold & Van House architects designed the building and the construction contractors were Kroffganz & Frank. The roof was erected by Carlson & Manuell, contractors noted for their heavy girder work at the Park Street YMCA and elsewhere. The building featured a second-story dance hall which was promoted as the largest in the state, accommodating 400 people on the dance floor, and including a gallery of tiered seats, cloak rooms, and restrooms for the patrons. The hardwood flooring in the dance hall displays the fact that the building is not quite square, like many uptown Butte buildings where streets don’t quite follow property lines that are sometimes along old mining claim boundaries. The dance floor is supported by huge metal turnbuckles that are exposed in the ceiling of the ground floor.

Over time the building saw various uses. In 1928, Schumacher had a meat store across the street (listed as 20 S. Montana, but there is no such address; his meat market was at 222 East Park in 1910, when he lived with his wife Jennie at 736 S. Wyoming) and lived in the upstairs apartment here (21 S. Montana) and managed the Rosemont Pavilion, as the dance hall was called. The building was still an auto sales and service center in the 1950s, with a wholesale tire dealership on the second floor. More recently the block was home to the Pioneer Club (which owned the building from the 1940s until 2010), City Vac and Sew, and Schulte’s Glass. In 2011 John and Courtney McKee renovated the building and in early 2012 opened Headframe Spirits, a boutique distillery, whose products bear names of Butte mines. Destroying Angel whiskey reflects the fact that the building stands on the western limit of the interesting Destroying Angel claim. The dance hall upstairs continues to be used for events.

Resources: Architectural inventory; Sanborn maps; city directories; Anaconda Standard, Nov 2, 1919. Modern photo by Richard I. Gibson. Text modified from write-up by Gibson in Butte CPR 2011 Dust-to-Dazzle tour guide.

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.

Pekin Noodle Parlor (117 S Main Street)

Built: 1909
Architect: George DeSnell
Map 

Ellen Baumler's blog post: "Not a brothel"

Butte’s Chinese community settled on this block in the 1880s. Dwellings, club rooms, laundries, restaurants, and stores selling Chinese goods crowded its thoroughfares and alleyways. This business block is a lone survivor displaying Asian roots. G. E. DeSnell designed the building on speculation for Butte attorney F. T. McBride. Upon completion in 1909, Hum Yow moved his Mercury Street noodle parlor to the second floor and soon owned the property. Upstairs noodle parlors were common in urban Chinese communities and the Pekin’s central stair and sign long beckoned customers.

Close proximity to Butte’s once teeming red light district has fueled local legends about the Pekin’s curtained booths.  However, these booths were a fixture in Asian restaurants and simply offered diners privacy. The two ground-floor storefronts housed Hum Yow’s Chinese Goods and Silks and G. P. Meinhart’s sign painting business. Hum Yow and his wife Bessie Wong—both California-born first-generation Chinese—raised three children in the rear living quarters. The Hums retired to California in 1952 and several more generations of the family have maintained this landmark business. Ding Tam (Danny Wong) and his son Jerry Tam celebrated the centennial of the family’s connection to the Pekin in 2011. News story • Menu

Resources: Historic plaque by Montana Historical Society. Top photo by Richard I. Gibson; black-and-while photo, 1979, by Jet Lowe, HABS/HAER (Library of Congress, public domain).

116 West Park (Original City Hall)

Built: 1884
Map 

By the early 1880s the railroad linked Butte to the outside world and the town had established itself as a mining camp with a great future. One of the few standing structures from the formative era is this masonry, two-story landmark (center of photo above; Jail House Coffee Shop). Under construction in 1884, it housed the first official city administrative offices. Included among these were the jail and a courtroom. Although the height of the second-story windows has been reduced, the upper portion of the building appears as it did in the 1880s. Ornate details along the parapet of angled and corbelled brick reveal the excellence of Butte’s early brick masons. After 1890 city offices moved, and the façade was modified to accommodate commercial space. The original stairway at the east end remains intact.

Although this was the first city hall, the jail here was the second city jail. The pre-1884 jail was located on Jackson Street, between Park and Galena. It was the far west edge of town at the time. 

Source: Modified from historic plaque by Montana Historical Society. Photo by Richard I. Gibson.

Index to place-based posts on Butte History blog

This is the first of several posts intended to serve as an index to place-based posts on the Butte History blog. Rather than duplicate them here, they are linked below and indexed with a label "Butte History blog posts."

Butte Miner Building
Greeley School

41-43 E. Broadway (Southern Hotel vaulted sidewalks)
Sacred Heart (444 E. Park)
Elizabeth Lochrie House (Granite at Emmett) 
First House in Butte (E. Quartz)
Basin Creek Reservoir Caretaker’s House 
Owsley Block (Park and Main)
Pennsylvania Mine disaster
Polygamy Alley (between Granite and Broadway)
Patrick Largey House (403 W. Broadway)
223 E. Granite (Julia Coughlin) 
Board of Trade (16 E. Park)
Richards & Rochelle (Main Street)
Gertie the Babyseller (Hamilton Street)
Warehouse Explosions (Jan. 15, 1895)
Bluebird Mine & Mill (Burlington)
First House in South Butte (900 block S. Wyoming)
Walkerville 1884