Month: October 2024

Of the four corners that make up Park and Main, the last to modernize was the southeast. It remained a collection of ramshackle frame buildings up until 1917, after the other three corners upgraded to large multi-story masonry structures. Perhaps this was because it formed the northern boundary for a district of single miner residences, gambling halls, saloons and brothels. As such, it was almost a transitional corner leading to better refined uptown Butte. No-one seemed eager to improve it until the early 20th century. 

The Sanborn fire insurance map of 1891 shows that this corner resisted serious business development into the turn of the 20th century. Of the thirty buildings shown facing Main (left edge) and Park (upper edge), half are saloons (Sal.) There are also five loan offices, three stores, two restaurants, a barber and a cigar store. The lower edge (Female Boarding) fronts onto Galena Street – at that time part of Butte’s red light district.

The southeast corner of Park and Main had some serious catching up to do if it was going to match the respectability of the rest of the intersection.

In 1906, the five story Owsley Block took up the northeast corner, the Lizzie Block held the northwest corner, and the southwest was anchored by the eight story State Savings Bank. Directly across Main from the bank, as if to mock it for pretentiousness, stood the original Board of Trade saloon. 

The rowdy corner of Park and Main

The corner originally sold for $20.00. John Berkin, a Butte pioneer who lived to see a full century, built a small miner’s cabin there. Tom Hoops ran some sort of saloon at the corner in 1879, giving way to Pat Conlen’s saloon. William Fritz first opened Board of Trade, another saloon, in June of 1885. It then changed hands multiple times until Charles Schmidt bought it in 1900, running it until the Rialto theater was built in 1916. 

Board of Trade was a two story frame building overlaid with brick veneer. The ground floor served as the bar while second floor ‘club rooms’ hosted gambling and card games. The location of Board of Trade ensured a diverse clientele, not all of whom were the cream of society. There are many stories like that of Tom Buckley, a serial lawbreaker who, in 1902 made a break from jail while being frisked. He eluded capture until two weeks later. Drunken and belligerent in the Board of Trade, he loudly cursed the two officers sent to arrest him, “until the air turned blue.” 

Raids or ‘pulls’ on Board of Trade’s gambling games were periodic from the 1890s on. They generally coincided with civic movements for moral improvement within Butte. An anti-gambling law was on the books as early as 1901, when deputy sheriffs raided a poker game at Board of Trade and rounded up nine violators. The Butte Miner related a raid in 1905, in which two officers who broke up a card game in the back were overpowered by the gamblers and thrown out into the street. One of the police later said he believed a man should be allowed to gamble if he wanted to. He then added, “to tell the truth, I think I got just about what was coming to me when they threw me out.”

Catch and release in Butte

Another story from 1907 featured a former bouncer at the California beer hall. Bill Sharkey was “a high, bulky buck with a neck like a bull.” Working at the California, Butte’s largest saloon, Sharkey was most likely well-practiced at bouncing  “Having upon him a large cargo of drink,” he set out one Sunday morning for the Board of Trade in search of excitement. Sharkey told the judge that “five guys blowed in and started to hand me a bunch. I come back hard and then somebody breaks in me teeth. “Yes, added the officer, and when I grabbed him he kicked another man in the stomach.”

Somehow, Sharkey was released on $10 bond. He then obtained a revolver from a bartender at the Copper King saloon, and headed back to Board of Trade. Two officers approached him as he exclaimed “I kin lick de whole police force, de whole bunch can’t take me up.” One of the policemen drew a gun and others kept Sharkey from pulling his. A fight ensued as the two officers slowly dragged him to jail. The next morning he looked badly battered in police court where he was fined $5.00 and jailed for carrying a gun. 

One might wonder how pure the spirits were back in that day. In 1910, another big man offered to buy everyone at the Board of Trade a drink, livening up the place. A police officer arrived, but only served to make the generous drinker angry. He lit into the cop, beating him while others attempted to pull him away. “I can lick the whole Butte police force,” he thundered. Considerably sobered in police court Monday, he explained, “I was soused. I didn’t know what I was doing, and am awfully sorry.” He was fined $25.00 for disturbing the peace. 

A taming of the last feral corner

Calls for condemning Board of Trade, and improving the corner with a modern building appeared in the paper as early as 1906.  Along with the Eagle loan office and the Mug saloon to the south and Spillum’s cigar store, a restaurant and a barbershop to the east, the Board of Trade met the wrecking ball in 1916 to make space for the new Rialto Theater. The Butte Daily Post mourned the passing of this corner, calling it a “Butte landmark,” and touted its history.

Board of Trade hosted a sort of Irish wake for its own demolition on August 15, 1916. “Step up and have a drink. You’ll have bourbon? Here’s a bottle; take it away. No, no charge; this is free, free as the air.” The Butte Miner marveled at the few arrests that resulted from this alcoholic largesse. 

Charles Schmidt retired from the saloon business and, in ill health, took his own life in 1918. He lived a full life, coming from Germany direct to the Nevada silver mines. Schmidt then worked in the sheep and cattle business in Idaho, and as a butcher in Helena in 1876. With a partner he first acquired the California brewery at 42 North Main, and then Board of Trade.

A still lively fixture at its location, Board of Trade simply relocated a door east of the Rialto, to 16-18 East Park.

Like many bars and saloons, Board of Trade coped with Prohibition by creating the somewhat false front of a soda fountain and cigar store. Though hidden, most contraband remained available. Ernesto ‘Juno’ Bruno operated the place from 1932 through 1965. He later owned part of the Sportsmen of Butte until 1972.

Today’s rather undistinguished corner of Park and Main Streets doesn’t do justice to its backstory. Today, it’s a U.S. Bank office, with a four lane drive through at the far end of the Park Street lot.

A second act for Board of Trade

In its new location, the Board of Trade underwent a major renovation in 1938. This notice was from December 14 of that year:

It was here that famed photographer Arthur Rothstein of the Farm Security Administration, a Depression era federal agency took a candid 1939 photo of the Board of Trade: 

The rather noirish image of a ‘newsie’ out front hawking papers and men curbside in their suits and fedoras evokes an era of bootleggers and gangsters. Rothstein took this shot during the short period between the end of Prohibition in 1933 and the start of America’s involvement in World War II. Unemployment in Butte ran about 25%, higher than the national average. There was a lot of time for hanging around.

And gambling. This was both an illegal and widespread activity in Butte. In 1942, there was a ruckus at a stud poker game in the Board of Trade. Mateo Rita lost an eye after being hit with a beer bottle. It was thrown by George Jursnick, another player who caught Rita “passing a cinch.” Rita had made a flush, then ‘checked’ to Jursnick who promptly bet his pile on a pair of aces. When Rita called the bet and raised – wham. Hard to know when one is violating some unwritten code. 

Rise of the Rialto

Once the southeast corner of Park and Main was cleared in 1916, The Greater Theater Company of Seattle and Portland built Butte’s largest theater, the 1,600 seat Rialto. They designed it to be one of the most opulent movie palaces in the northwest, with an investment of $260,000. The foyer was marble and the carpeting of angora wool. All lighting was indirect, and theater air exchanged every 90 seconds. That air circulated over ice in the summer and heating coils in the winter. 

Custom painted panels featured nymphs, fountains,  peacocks and tropical foliage. There were telephones, writing desks and settees in the ladies’ rooms. Dressing tables with triple mirrors offered easy access to combs, brushes and powder puffs. The men’s room sported easy chairs and provided for all of a smoker’s needs.  Films from this time were silent, so the great theaters required state of the art organs. The Rialto spent $45,000 on an American Master version. 

Opening night on Park and Main

A steady patronage of moviegoers thronged to the new theater. From 1919 on, S&S Jewelers occupied the coveted corner of Park and Main beneath the Rialto. Next to S&S on East Park was the Aero Club, famed for its Italian dinners since 1937.

Rise and fall of a Rialto way of life

The Rialto sat across Main Street from the Metals Bank building (see note #1). Times had profoundly changed over the years since the Metals was built. Banks once projected a solid federal look as a symbol of financial strength. Car culture didn’t require that; it demanded convenience. As drive-ins replaced cafes, so drive throughs made a memory of standing before a teller at the bank. To keep its edge, Metals Bank planned a $1.5 million relocation across the street, to where the Rialto stood.

Theaters experienced cultural and technological disruptions as well. Despite the adoption of color, cinemascope, double features and even drive-ins, they ultimately yielded to the convenience of television. Butte’s grand movie palaces: the Rialto, Fox, Broadway (later Montana,) Peoples (later Park), Ansonia and American gradually went extinct (see Note #2). The Rialto screened movies until August of 1965, and then closed its sale to Metals.

The law of diminishing returns

The grand theater was unceremoniously razed, while the paper extolled the benefit of contracts let to local demolition and construction companies. Such jobs were scarce as the local economy idled. It had been two years since a building of any size was erected uptown.

Along with the theater, the new bank replaced S&S Jewelers, Day and Nite Market, a waiting room for the Butte Bus Lines, City Taxi, George Donut Shop, the Rumpus Room, Rialto Barber Shop and Tripp Gun and Key. Next door, the Board of Trade, Jeffers Block, Treasure State Sporting Goods, Majestic Tavern and Stockman’s Bar all fell. The vacant Meyer Building further down Park once housed the Peoples Theater. Subsequently home to The Park Hat Shop, Pony Chili Parlor and Montana Barber Shop, it was also demolished . 

The point of listing these is that there was much disruption to the normal flow of uptown Butte. All the stores, barber shops, bars and cafes people walked to were replaced by a facility designed to accommodate people who never left their cars. Four lanes and a lobby took the place of two commercially dense and dynamic city blocks. A single structure with a dozen employees replaced twelve businesses. The transition helped obviate any need for a bus stop or cab stand at Park and Main. The commercial ecosystem that made uptown Butte once so vibrant was collapsing. In the case of the Rialto, a quarter million dollar investment in 1916 yielded a buyout of $65,000 fifty years later. 

 U.S. Bank eventually absorbed Metals Bank, and the drive-through bank remains on the southeast corner of Park and Main. The times have disrupted banking right along with the whole south side of this intersection. The dawn of internet banking, direct deposit, ATMs, Venmo… who really needs a physical bank on a regular basis? With the single story drug store that replaced the Lizzie Block on the opposite corner, three corners of Park and Main had taken on the look of a central business district with diminished ambitions.

A brief afterlife for Board of Trade

Board of Trade moved to 12 East Broadway in 1965. This address had a tale of its own to tell, dating from the late 1880s.  The main entrance was at 42 North Main, where Al’s Photo Shop later operated. The California brewery and beer hall ran from there behind the corner on Broadway to an alley in back of the city jail. The California Club, a posher place, occupied the second floor.

Copper King F. Augustus Heinze often held court from the club. During an election campaign he invited all of Butte miners to drink on the house at the California. The resulting crush collapsed a wooden sidewalk built over a gulch on Broadway. It was also where Teddy Traparish, owner of Meaderville’s famous Rocky Mountain Cafe started his career as a humble swamper in 1903. This was during the same period that Heinze commanded the club. Traparish referred to the California as a “jumping joint.” 

On June 24 1969, this final iteration of Board of Trade complex burned, sharing a fate common in uptown Butte. Business fires were frequent in this town of labor booms and busts. As the uptown was close enough to share walls, a localized fire could easily spread to its neighbors. Butte lost several irreplaceable blocks in this way during the 1970s. 

Some referred to these as ‘friction fires,’ those caused by the rubbing together of a building’s mortgage and insurance documents. Others think Anaconda Company was systematically torching the uptown to reduce its value in a buyout, in order to extend the open pit mine. In any event, as with so many other businesses, fire put a final end to the Board of Trade. 

Resources

Note #1 – More history of the Metals Bank building in my earlier essay, here: https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=4044

Note #2 – Well within range of Park and Main, The American Theater (capacity 1,000) was at 25 W. Park, built in 1903 and taken by a fire in 1950. It had a front of Mexican onyx and a matron on duty to tend babies while parents attended the show. The nearby Park (capacity 780) at 32 E. Park burned in 1949. The Broadway (capacity 2,175) was built in 1901 and demolished in the late 1980s. The Ansonia (capacity 1,100) was wrecked to expand parking for the Miners Bank in 1966. Only the Fox (capacity 1,200) survives, as the beautifully restored Motherlode Theater.

An outstanding resource of classic American movie houses is Cinema Treasures at https://cinematreasures.org

Sanborn fire insurance maps provide great insight into the make up of a city, building by building. Some can be found online at the Library of Congress; https://www.loc.gov/

First opening of BoT from the Daily Town Talk of June 29, 1885.

The story of Tom Buckley form the Butte Daily Post of November 15, 1902. 

Failed police raid on BoT from Butte Miner of November 5, 1905

A representative call for condemnation of the Board of Trade building appears in the Butte Daily Post of August 9 1906. 

Sharkey takes all comers from the Butte Evening News of April 15, 1907

Trial of second brawler from Butte Evening News of March 7, 1910

Closing party at the Board of Trade from the Butte Miner of August 15, 1916. 

Pre-razing history of the Board of Trade and neighboring properties from Butte Daily Post; August 3, 1916. 

Obituary of Charles Schmidt in the Butte Miner of May 28, 1918. 

Further resources

Some information on Arthur Rothstein in Butte from Aaron Parrett for Big Sky Journal magazine; 2016. 

Story of a poker game gone awry from the Montana Standard of January 21, 1944. 

Gambling trial in Butte from The Montana Standard of March 13 and 14, 1947, and Butte Daily Post of March 13, 1937.

Gambling man ejected by police from Board of Trade. Takes bar to court. Montana Standard; November 9, 1963.

All I know about the old Rialto Theater I learned from The Puget Sound Pipeline, a blog of the Puget Sound Theatre Organ Society. Well worth a visit: https://www.pstos.org/instruments/mt/butte/rialto.htm

Oliver G. Wallace is little known today, but known by the widely popular movie music he composed. I recommend a look at his work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wallace

History of the California beer hall and club from The Montana Standard of June 25, 1969. Articles like this look much like obituaries, and often evoked the same emotions from local readers. 

Pedestrian traffic study by WPA for Butte Police from Montana Standard of December 10, 1939

The sale of the Rialto Theater; in the Montana Standard of May 7, August 8 and August 22, 1965. 

George Everett reference from Champagne In A Tin Cup; Outback Ventures; 1995

Data on American Theater from Motography magazine of July 12, 1913. Thanks to Charmaine Zoe.

The first recorded mention of Lot 8, Block 29 in Butte Townsite was filed in April of 1876. It declared that the block lay within the boundary of the famed Smokehouse Quartz Lode Mining claim. This was the northwest corner of Park and Main Streets, and would eventually become the Lizzie Block. The word “Block” here refers to a large multi-use building, rather than a city block.

Northwest corner Park and Main today

Where the Lizzie block once stood, across from the Metals Bank building at Park and Main now sits an undistinguished single story bar called the Party Palace. A poor ornament for the city’s key corner, it’s a low slung brick and glass joint, deeply inset under a green structural steel roof festooned with shamrocks. It thunders with bass-heavy country music and patrons shouting into the wee hours on the street every Saturday night. This is not in keeping with the normal quiet of that corner, although it was not always so peaceful. 

The shamrocks were an attempt to catch a free St. Patrick’s Day ride along with the M&M bar next door on Main. M&M was always nothing but that; from 1890 the most interesting bar in Butte. It was an authentic relic of the uptown’s early joyride. The M&M held a bar along one wall and a grill along the other, a cigar counter and a gaming room in the back. The place had no locks on its doors, operated 24/7, and poured gallons of Old Bushmills in mid-March of each year. With a historical majority and mass cultural adoption, the Irish and near-Irish alike turned the bar into a dense mosh pit, while the diner side of the place served up loads of corned beef and cabbage. From midnight to midnight on St. Pat’s Day.  (See note #1)

Birth of the Lizzie Block

On October 28,1876, Daniel Dellinger, proprietor of Butte’s first hardware store, purchased the two lots at the northwest corner of Park and Main for $20.00. He sold the property three years later to Joseph Hyde for $15,000. Hyde associated with the W.A. Clark banks in Deer Lodge and Butte, and was a member of the territorial legislature that made Butte a city in 1879. Hyde and Dellinger did business together as an eponymously named hardware store in the 100 block of North Main. 

A frame structure soon went up on the lot. It was initially occupied by a pair of early Butte realtors, a police magistrate, and several others. 

Fire ravished much of this area of Main street in 1879. Stone and brick construction typical of a maturing city replaced the wood frame structures of the pioneer boom town. In 1884, Hyde cleared his corner for a new three story Lizzie Block, named for his daughter. It was a three story affair, with 21 rooms on the second and third floors and store frontage off the sidewalk level. It also had a basement, about which more follows.

A victim of its environment?

It almost immediately secured a dubious reputation. The Butte Miner of January 29, 1886 cited city ordinance #44 of two years earlier. It prohibited prostitution, except in “Blocks Nos 27 1n 28, and east of Main street of said city, (as well as) Blocks Nos 37, 42, 43, 52 and 53, known as Chinatown.” 

The paper went on to accuse the Lizzie Block, “one of the best-known of these houses in the heart of the business portion of the city. While it has been open but a short time, it has made a reputation for itself which will take a long time to remove.” The woman who leased it claimed to be unaware of the character of the tenants rooming there, but had “a number of roomers prominent as beer-jerkers and others known to be public prostitutes.” The Miner called for the cleaning out of “such a class of clientele” from this “new and handsome property.” (see note #2)

The problem wasn’t so much the existence of prostitution as confining it to what the ordinance called “the restricted zone.” Butte was a mining town full of hard working men with full pockets on payday. It was the job of others to contrive of ways to empty those pockets. Booze, gambling and prostitution thrived, while city government tried to accommodate everyone as best it could.

Downstairs, stressing the respectable

The Tivoli beer hall, not associated with the Butte’s Tivoli brewery or concert hall, opened in December of 1885, and occupied the entire basement of the Lizzie Block. Owner Alexander Grant furnished it with a 25 foot mahogany bar backed by a 13 x 7’ French plate mirror. The hall held 40 cherry tables and 200 chairs imported from Austria. It also featured female beer jerkers, a stage, piano and amateur vocalists. A series of “neat wine rooms” took up a corner near the stage. 

As so many restaurants and bars do, the Tivoli folded within the year, and the basement passed into the hands of its creditors. It reopened as a bowling alley/shooting gallery in the summer of 1886. 

Upstairs, Smiling Albert’s

Upstairs from the Tivoli, another beer hall occupied the same corner at street level. Originally known as Smiling Albert’s, it touted a 24 hour lunch, specializing in Boston baked beans, brown bread and clam chowder. 

W.P. Schussler bought and renovated the place, renaming it the Arcade. It had both front and rear entrances and upper rooms for card or club parties, which reads like code for wine rooms as well.

A point of interest was the bar’s mineral cabinet, with mining specimens, along with “curios, fancy pictures, and genuine silverware.”

The Sump, lived down to its name

Back downstairs, by 1893 Adolph Reichle and Arthur Schimpf transitioned the Tivoli into the Sump. The basement of the Lizzie Block established itself as a place where a man could go for a cheap beer, a hand of cards and a fight. One night that year a “drunken row” broke out among several “foreigners,” drawing the dauntless Butte policeman Jere Murphy’s attention. He attempted to quell the ruckus, but several of the group set upon him. The Montana Standard reported that “Jere gave a fine account of himself, and arrested and jailed three whose names are unpronounceable.” 

A good indicator of the Sump’s status was its role as evening caretaker of the indigent. In April of 1894, the Combination saloon a couple of doors from the Sump kept its floors and sidewalks wet to discourage overnighters. Prior to that, from 15 to 30 men a night slept there. They migrated to the friendlier confines of the Sump, now handling at least 180 men every night (see note 3).  So it was a most appropriate venue for a staging of ‘Coxey’s Army’ the following year. Unemployment was high in Butte then, a bust cycle resulting from the Panic of 1893. The “army” was a nationwide assortment of the unemployed, who proposed to march en masse to Washington DC and demand work. 

Coxey’s Army assembles.

As a ‘sump’ is the lowest spot in a basement (or mine shaft) where idle water collects, it seemed a fitting choice for idled men to gather. The Butte Miner observed that “there would be no need of Coxey’s army if there were no men in the Sump.”

The Miner advocated for the formation of a Butte regiment, pledging for the man “who has sought in vain for employment and has no means of livelihood” that “his regiment will be properly cared for on the road, join the unterrified and terrorizing army of commonweal’s and march bravely toward the rising sun.” 

As it happened, on the night of April 7th, 1894, an estimated two to three thousand men attended an outdoor meeting of Coxey’s industrial army. They formed up in front of the Sump, its headquarters and marched to the square of the court house on Granite street. The movement’s leader, William Hogan demanded the issuance of bonds to improve country roads and adoption of free coinage of silver. This was always a winning stance in mining country. A Major Camp spoke and compared the freeing of white slaves to the emancipation of black ones. He then addressed the men who “by force of circumstances were compelled to sleep on a hard floor in the Sump.” “I used to be a farmer, and I wouldn’t let my hogs sleep as these poor men have to.” 

“You men are not going to Washington with arms, but are going with empty stomachs and in rags, which will appeal to legislators more eloquently than could a Clay or a Webster. Camp on their trail. Corner the senators and tell them they must do something for you. We must march, singing, ‘We are coming Grover Cleveland, 300,000 strong.’” 

Having picked up unemployed rail workers in Tacoma, Portland and Spokane, the addition of many idled miners made for a considerable mass of manpower under Hogan. Two weeks after the Butte meeting, on April 21, 1894, Hogan and 500 of the ‘army’ took over a Union Pacific train. They enjoyed local support as they headed east, evading capture until reaching Forsyth, Montana. Federal troops apprehended and dispersed the group there. This deployment of federal forces presaged their use later in the year in breaking up the Pullman strike. 

Business as usual down in the Sump

After the “army’s” unsuccessful march, life returned to normal. In April of 1895, policeman Murphy was investigating the passing of a bad check at the First National Bank. He arrested the culprit, who stated he received the check from a man at the Sump. Upon going there, the originator of the check was found “drunk and down in one corner of the room.” 

Unfortunately, the Sump somehow survived into the next century. As late as 1905, it remained a magnet for “brake beam tourists,” one of many sobriquets for hobos. 

On the fourth of July that year, one of their number got up on a keg and began orating about hoisting old Glory, draping the bunting and honoring our founders. He said; “our ancestors gave us free speech and a free press, and then made the mistake of their lives by not giving us free beer.” 

He then assailed the wealthy, naming several who were then in the penitentiary. They were “so penurious that they would rob a cheese of its smell.” 

“I have only assimilated sixteen beers, two whisky sours and three cocktails, all of which I’ve managed to keep down with that excellent free lunch at the other end of the bar. I now feel as if I could talk all day. “

“In old revolutionary times Benedict Arnold tried to barter off the whole country to its enemies. Yet he was no more guilty of treason than the modern man who endeavors to steal a huge slice of the nation. and its industries.” 

He eventually yielded the floor to his companion, ‘Buttons’ who proceeded to sing the national anthem “in any key he feels like, while I proceed to the bar and discuss the exhilarating qualities of your excellent beer.”

Sump and Atlantic bars in contrast

The Sump owners, Reichle and Schimpf did alright for themselves. They built what became the Atlantic Bar at 56 West Park in 1897. It carried imported German beers and boasted of the longest bar (unproven claim of 250 feet) in the world. Renowned for its free lunch, it operated until 1927. A new Atlantic opened at 46 West Park in 1940, and ran until 1969. Fire destroyed both locations, one in 1969, the other in 1974. 

Enforcement of Prohibition began in 1920. Locally, law enforcement largely ignored all but the most overt scofflaws in Butte. The Butte Evening News noted; “a man must almost fight to get a foothold on the rail,” as a score of bartenders at the Atlantic served 3,000 to 4,000 thirsty patrons per day. It further observed that “liquor cannot be legally procured in Montana for love or money. Meantime, (owning) a saloon in Butte is as good as a copper mine.”

The Arcade; but first, the other arcade

The name ‘Arcade’ (see note 4) is a bit confusing. There was a penny arcade at 39 North Main, that opened in February of 1909. An Edison production with picture and music machines., it proved popular from its opening day. Short coin operated picture shows were of history, travel, art, drama, sports and humor. The music shows featured band, orchestra and vocals of all sorts. These programs were all changed out every few days. 

As these things tend to run their course, the penny arcade needed a new gimmick. It exhibited what they called an Aztec mummy – “the first of its kind exhibited in Butte.” It was said to be the remains of Princess Wa-Me-Ta, found in Arizona by explorers of the cliff dwellings. Scientists said Wa-Me-Ta was 1000-2000 years old. The arcade extended an invitation to Butte physicians to inspect the mummy for themselves. 

An epilogue to this tale happened in May of 1928, when employees at the Jones Storage warehouse investigated a large box, left there nine years earlier. Upon opening it, they were horrified to find the body of a mummified Indian. Police and coroner broke off their investigation when they determined that the mummy had died “approximately 40 centuries ago.” 

Three months later the penny arcade brought in what was reputed to be a petrified man. It was advertised as found by a trapper on a sand bar in the Missouri river, half buried in the wet sand. The trapper notified authorities, and ‘doctors and scientists went out to examine it.” He then took it on the road for exhibit. The hands were bound by a petrified rawhide thong and there was a bullet hole in the forehead of the man. Why foul play wasn’t investigated was left unaddressed. 

Murphy stays busy

In 1918, police chief Jere Murphy arrested an employee of the penny arcade, on a charge of running a gaming operation. A man testified that he was induced to throw balls at a target to win a turkey. He won, but received no turkey. Chief Murphy vowed to visit the place frequently to personally enforce the laws pertaining to lotteries and gambling. 

Just a year later, police arrested the proprietor of the penny arcade and charged her with bootlegging. As Prohibition began that year, officers hauled in a drunken 16 year old girl and her boyfriend. Both implicated the arcade. Its owner denied having liquor on the premises, but a search turned up two quarts of port wine and a case of Centennial beer. 

A wider view of the Lizzie Block

Joseph Hyde, who had bought the Lizzie Block for $15,000 sold it to a Butte business syndicate in 1906 for $120,000. For forty feet of frontage on Park and 100 feet on Main, each linear foot went for an average of $2,500, which was big money at the time. As the uptown boomed, some of this premium was due to a new eight story State Savings bank building (see note #5) going up across the street. Current residents at the Lizzie included the Northern Pacific ticket office, Pritchard and Harrison, Carl Engel sporting goods, Itkin’s jewelry store, and the Butte Street Car company. The upper floors held offices and apartments.  

Louis Dreibelbis owned the building in 1930, and planned to raze the Lizzie Block to create a new eight story building on the site. The Great Depression derailed those plans, and the Lizzie Block stuck around unchanged for another quarter century. In various times, the ground floor hosted the Arcade bar, Jacobs boot hat and valise store, a Northern Pacific ticket office, Carl Engle’s sporting goods store and the home of Butte’s civil air patrol. 

The real Arcade

The Arcade bar held the ground level at the northwest corner of Park and Main Streets, across from the Metals Bank building during the late 1930s. It had entrances facing both streets.

Depression era photographer Arthur Rothstein travelled the country for the Farm Security Administration, as did Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and Walker Evans. Along the way, he captured some iconic photos of America in flux. Perhaps his most memorable shot was one of a farmer and his son in Cimarron County Oklahoma, seeking shelter as a dust storm approaches. 

Taken three years later, Rothstein’s work in Butte similarly captures its time. With the economy stuck in neutral, men were idled from the mines. They gathered on corners to seek work or just hang out. He caught a couple of scenes at the Arcade which nearly speak for themselves. 

And maybe everyone did hang out at the Arcade. it was at the heart of the mining city, where a man might be closest to hearing any hopeful news. The Arcade knew how to leverage its popularity during a lean time. It adopted the motto: “If he’s not at the Arcade, he isn’t in town.” 

The Arcade featured Blatz beer, a Milwaukee product brewed from 1851 through 1959. That was a nice run for the brewer, though not one notable for fine brewing. One could also get some interesting mixed drinks at the Arcade, like champagne cocktails and ginsicles. These were drinks that could lend themselves to dilution as required, and variable pricing. In New Orleans, a female dancer would ask a bar patron to buy her a drink. She would then order a champagne cocktail, and the bar would charge whatever it wanted for the 7Up she was served. Caveat emptor. 

Trading down at Park and Main

By 1954, the upper two floors of the Lizzie block had been vacant for some years. The whole building was demolished for construction of a single story business. The Montana Standard heralded the proposed building as “ultra-modern.” Its construction anticipated future expansion by allowing for additional stories to be added later. 

The enthusiasm for this corner died down with the building of a generic looking Rexall drug store there. It did business as the Main Drug until 1970. It was then purchased by Diversified Realty for $60,000 on a zero interest note. That firm looked to sell to another buyer as soon as possible. It took two years, and sold for the same price Diversified paid. Supply and demand had long since leveled out in uptown Butte. 

Up to now-ish.

The Party Palace got going on this corner in 2001, following nine years of vacancy. It has remained popular, loud and a frequent contributor to the local police blotter for the past two decades. Still a big step up from the sump. 

Perhaps the Party Palace is right where it belongs, after all.

Notes

Note 1: In an uptown that could ill afford the loss, the M&M burned to the ground in 2021. This was an all too familiar end to many of the best old things in uptown Butte. 

The M&M Bar and Grill reopened right next door to the ruins of its century-0ld self. For more into, check out https://www.mandmbarandcafe.com/history

Note 2: The Butte Miner was bought by W.A. Clark in 1881, championing Clark’s interests and Democrat party causes. It was also a booster of civilization in fast-developing and free wheeling Butte. In its January 30, 1886 edition, the Miner applauded raids on the “vile dives on Galena Street and other sections of the city.” It then added a short position statement:

Note 3: Micky Malia of the Montana Standard recalled that during an 1893 visit to the Sump, Avalon, M&M and Combination, he and a friend counted 167 men asleep on the floors. “They didn’t seem to mind the poor devils sleeping on the floor. Some of the gamblers gave them newspapers to lie on.” (February 9, 1936)

Note 4: There was also an Arcade Saloon on Utah Avenue; at least in 1905. It was a rough place, and not to be confused with the Arcade at Park and Main.

Note 5: This is today’s Metals Bank Building, represented in an earlier essay at https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=4044

Resources

An editorial about prostitution in Butte, as well as the 1884 ordinance regulating it appears in the Butte Miner of January 29, 1886. 

Background on Reichle and Schimpf from Dick Gibson in the Montana Standard of December 23, 2019. 

Information on the Atlantic Bar and quotes from Butte Evening News extracted from Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men blog, by Jack Sullivan; February 8, 2005. 

A fight at the Sump from the Montana Standard of May, 1893.

Sleeping arrangements at the Combination and Sump from the Butte Miner of April 19,1894.

Meeting of Coxey’s Army at the Sump from the Butte Miner; April 5, 1894 and April 8, 1894.

A good summary of the Coxey movement, and interesting trivia like its influence on L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz resides in Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxey’s_Army

Sale of Lizzie Block in 1906 from Butte Evening News of December 29, 1906 and Butte Miner of December 30, 1906

Hobo’s July 4th speech at the Sump from Butte Tribune Review of July 8, 1905. 

A great discussion of women and winerooms of the Victorian era appears, by Richard F Selcer; 01/24/2019; at Historynet at https://www.historynet.com/wine-women-andwhats-wrong/

Further resources

Chief Murphy visits penny arcade from Butte Miner of November 23, 1918. 

Holiday shopping in Butte from the Montana Standard of December 20, 1928.

The discovery of the Indian mummy was from the Montana Standard of May 19,1928

A good resource and album of Arthur Rothstein’s work appears in the Big Sky Journal of 2016; by Aaron Parrett. https://bigskyjournal.com/images-of-the-west-arthur-rothstein-in-butte/ This is also the source for photos of both Arcade and Cimarron County, OK. 

History of the earliest acquisition of the lots for, and building of the Lizzie Block by Daniel Dellinger and Joseph Hyde from the Butte Miner of August 15, 1925. 

Coverage of the demolition of the Lizzie Block from the Montana Standard of April 25, 1954.

The sale of Main Drug is covered by the Montana Standard of November 26, 1970 and January 25, 1972

Ever enlightening Dick Gibson gave a quick history of the Lizzie Block in a Montana Standard article from May 16, 2016. It provides background on Arthur Rothstein, and a story about former US senator Burton K. Wheeler.