Butte, America’s Story Episode 16 - St. Paul’s Hospital

Welcome to Butte, America’s Story. I’m Dick Gibson.

The short-lived St. Paul’s hospital stood at the southeast corner of Gold and Montana Streets, 502 S. Montana. It was a three-story rectangular building, with a kitchen, dining room, and parlor on the ground floor.

St. Paul’s Hospital was only listed in the city directories from 1900-1902, even though Western Resources Magazine in 1901 reported that “the sum of $500 has recently been spent in the operating room alone … For a dollar a month … one can have medical treatment, board, nursing and surgical attendance, and furthermore the choice of thirty doctors.” A dollar a month was pretty sparse revenue for any business, even in those days and even if their wards were full, so perhaps those glowing claims were what made the hospital short-lived. It’s advertised capacity was 40, and they offered ambulance service.

Like any hospital, St Paul’s saw its share of tragedy. In June 1901, 14-year-old Nicholas Biever was brought in, terribly mangled. Nicholas and his friends had stolen some dynamite from a blacksmith shop on Timber Butte. The shop owner, William Robinson, was chastised for insufficiently protecting his dangerous property, but the boys had broken in with a crowbar and ultimately Biever was found to have caused his own death, three days after the explosion at a stone quarry on Timber Butte.

Rev. J.M. Settle was President and General Manager of the place and it depended entirely on his personal credit. He lived about five blocks away, at 103 S. Idaho Street, a small 1-story home that stood on the south side of St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church. Rev. Settle reportedly oversaw building of that church but soon abandoned his post there for the hospital, also known as Johnston House. The church and the hospital were both built in 1899-1900. The hospital, however, was “entirely non-sectarian, Jew or Gentile, Christian or unbeliever, all receiving the same skilled, considerate, conscientious care.” Sisters Hospital, which became St. James, was already in operation and was much larger, so it may have forced St. Paul’s hospital out of business.

After the hospital closed, the building became a saloon and boarding house. It was gone by 1951. Today, the east side of Montana between Gold and Platinum Streets is bare ground; a small modern structure stands near the corner where St. Paul’s Hospital once stood, across from the Corner Bar.

St. Paul’s Methodist Church became famous or infamous, depending on your point of view, as the headquarters of the Butte Strike Bulletin, the anti-Anaconda Company newspaper supported by the Industrial Workers of the World. It was there in September 1918 that a force of Butte Police and U.S. Army men led by Captain Omar Bradley raided the newspaper offices and arrested everyone.

Butte residents recall the church building later as home of a mortuary, and Beverley’s Bridal Shop. It has been vacant for years.

As writer Edwin Dobb has said, "Like Concord, Gettysburg, and Wounded Knee, Butte is one of the places America came from." Join us next time for more of Butte, America’s Story.