Butte, America’s Story Episode 289 - North Main

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

The parking lot east of the Archives buildings wasn’t always a parking lot. In fact, in Uptown Butte, virtually no open spaces, parking lots, vacant lots, were open—there were buildings there.

In 1939-42 photographers from the Farm Security Administration Office of War Information came to Butte to document the town. That photographic record, all in the public domain and available through the Library of Congress, is a snapshot of Butte life like no other.

John Vachon’s April 1942 photo of the 300 block of North Main shows buildings that many people probably remember, as they were not demolished until 1970 as part of the Model Cities urban renewal program. The Neely Apartment Building, at 301-305 North Main, was a three-story lodging house with businesses on the ground floor – the typical Butte arrangement. It had been erected in about 1888 as a two-story structure called the Kingsbury Block, replacing two log cabins on the corner of Quartz and Main. In 1890, a third floor was added – another typical Butte adjustment to the exploding population, which had increased almost six-fold between 1880 and 1890. Over time the Kingsbury block held groceries, a music store, a dealer in gas fittings, and other businesses, while the upper floors evolved from just offices to both offices and sleeping rooms.

The National Market at 307 North Main and the building to the north at 309 were both pre-1884 buildings. From their construction until 1905 or so, they held a drug store and a billiard parlor-saloon, respectively. In 1916, 307 had a sausage factory in the rear and a meat market out front, and 309 was still a saloon.

By 1939, the corner store in the Kingsbury-Neely Block was vacant, but Mrs. Katherine Bonner still ran a rooming house upstairs. The New National Market occupied the middle building at 307, and Frank Caldwell had his barbershop and home in the single story building at 309 North Main.

The Model Cities program in 1968-71 brought $22 million in federal funding into Butte to establish the Local Development Corporation, the Port of Butte, and to demolish dilapidated structures, with more than $300,000 allocated for that demolition. About 300 buildings came down. The Kingsbury-Neely Block had been vacant for years and was on the chopping block - literally. During its demolition, falling debris damaged the adjacent National Market building to the extent that it had to be demolished as well, even though it was sound.

This block on the west side of Main Street between Quartz Street and the alley to the north remained a vacant lot until the new Archives building was erected in 2010. Today the site of these buildings is the Archives’ parking lot.

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.