Historically speaking, a block was a term used in Butte for a large building, typically of multiple stories. There were many, including the Silver Bow, Copper, Lizzie, Thornton, Beaver, Pennsylvania, and Phoenix blocks.
Introducing William Owsley
William Owsley was a nineteen year old Missourian who migrated, first to Bannock in the gold rush of 1863, then on to Butte the following year. This made him a true pioneer in the Summit Valley mining district. A rough gold camp was newly formed around ten gulches that extended from the Butte hill toward Silver Bow Creek.
He came as a member of a foursome, sent to help work the Black Quartz gold claim. They joined a small group living in makeshift cabins at the mouth of Dublin Gulch. By the next summer, Owsley was successfully ‘upstreaming.’ That is, he realized it might be easier to make money selling shovels as opposed to digging with one. He opened a saloon – never a bad idea in a working man’s town, and used his profits to acquire property around the camp.
Owsley built a reservoir to store water from a ditch that channeled Silver Bow Creek water to the placer (see note #1) gulches. The site developed and the value of his land holdings grew. As placer gold played out, most left but Bill Owsley stayed on.
Maybe just plumb lucky
A couple of fortuitous things happened that validated his judgement. First, Marcus Daly came to town in 1876. Daly travelled to Butte on behalf of Utah investors who were impressed by the quality of ore arriving in Salt Lake City from Butte. Some pioneers had begun hard rock mining, but it proved initially rough going. Ore had to travel by wagon 400 miles to Corrine, Utah for processing. It would take a while to bring refining capacity to the Butte hill, but Daly was the man with the money for it. Daly was as committed to staying as Owsley was. He became the original Copper King.
The other fortunate break occurred in 1881. William Farlin struck silver at his Asteroid (later Travona) mine. It gave new life to the dying settlement, and put Owsley’s surface land holdings in the middle of the action.
As shrewd real estate transactions go, Owsley’s was perhaps the best in Butte. His land became the heart of the city at Park and Main streets. He first ran a large log livery stable there from 1874 to 1890. It was well-established by the time he ran this ad in 1876:
Horse trading among big partners
By 1880, he partnered with Lee Mantle in an expanded livery that sold and boarded horses, in addition to the sale of carriages and wagons. Mantle was already a powerful presence in Butte, one of its first city aldermen, and founder of the Butte Intermountain newspaper. He grew wealthy from his insurance, real estate and mining investments. Eventually, he became a territorial representative, the fourth mayor of Butte, and US Senator.
Partners in business, Mantle and Owsley also leveraged their equestrian holdings by partnering in the West Side Racing Association. There they rubbed shoulders with other luminary directors like Patrick Largey and J. Ross Clark (see note #2). The track they built featured equine and bicycle races from 1881 through 1897.
The Owsley Livery complex at Park and Main was formidable. By 1884, Owsley expanded his holdings there to include a two-story log lodging, a grocery, cigar store and hay lofts. He controlled McGovern’s saloon and card room next door as well. A section to the northeast had a carriage house, and dressing rooms for drivers. Just north lay Owsley Hall, which in 1884 housed the Variety Theater, telephone and telegraph company, hardware store and a tin shop.
Lee Mantle was off to political pursuits when Owsley later teamed with T. M. Carr in the livery. Perhaps a reflection of the frequent mortality involved in hard rock mining, they expanded into hearse rental service. Owsley also partnered with H.G. “Hank” Valiton in the same line of work. (see note 3)
For a time, livery was indeed a stable business in Butte. The 1880s were a time when industry, commerce and recreation all required horses. Bill Owsley was there to serve the need. At its height, in 1917, Butte had eleven livery businesses.
This was a town of boom and bust, however. By 1927, ten years later, Butte had 4,000 cars and a street railway on its roads – but no remaining liveries.
Bill Owsley goes big
An 1888 testimonial appeared in the friendly Mantle-owned Intermountain. It stated:
““Bill Owsley may have his faults, but we go on record by declaring that there is not within the territory of Montana, a manlier, more popular or more open-hearted man. He is as generous as he is brave, and as brave as he is big. Known by almost everybody as plain, honest everyday Bill Owsley, he plays faro and drinks whiskey occasionally, but there is not a man in this community who will be longer remembered as a pioneer and character than William Owsley. Long may he wave, politics or no politics.”
An article in the November 20, 1889 Montana Standard noted that William Owsley was offered $60,000 for his holdings at Park and Main, including the saloon. Perhaps inspired by the value of this bid, within two years, he razed the livery and a new six story Owsley Block was under construction.
The 45,000 square foot Owsley Block was a distinctive five story brick beauty with a four story rounded corner cupola and intricate cornices. . From completion in 1891, and over the course of its nearly eighty year tenure on the corner, it housed Ley the Jeweler, then on the ground floor corner, and a pharmacy next door on Main. There were also, over the years, physicians and dentists, attorneys, an employment agency, cigar store, tailors, dry goods merchants, architects and, on the fifth floor, the Butte Business College.
Another sign of the times developed in the basement of the Owsley Block. With partners, Bill Owsley formed the Phoenix Electric Light and Steam Heating Company. They brought in three dynamos (capable of powering 1,000 electric lights) an engine, two boilers, a water pump and a number of arc lamps, all going beneath the grand building on a forty year lease. They received their first contract early in 1895, providing heat to the new post office for five years at $500.00 per year. The firm lasted until 1910, gradually merging into Montana Power, and ultimately Northwestern Energy.
The school on the hill
Butte’s two institutes of higher learning were both founded in 1890. Montana School of Mines (or Montana Tech) held the high ground at the head of West Park Street. Closer to the hub of the city, the Butte Business College began in 1890, and continued through 1975.
A diversified economy developed within Butte in the 1890s, requiring many skills beyond those of hard rock mining. During its 85 years, the college taught over 35,000 students proficiency in typewriting, shorthand, penmanship, mathematics and bookkeeping. One of them was William Owsley himself.
The college occupied the fifth floor of the Owsley Block from 1892 through 1953, when it relocated to the Butte High School annex. That annex, larger than the available space at the Owsley Block, had been the site of Army recruiting and induction during World War II. No longer needed in the post-war era, it provided a suitable and larger home for the college.
Owsley ‘goes west’
By the time William Owsley died at age 79 in 1919, he was one of the last remaining Butte pioneers. He had seen a cluster of rude cabins beside a gulch grow to a city of nearly 100,000, with all the trappings of urban life. it must have been a wild ride, and justified his long optimism over the city’s future. Bill Owsley ‘went west,’ as dying was sometimes termed, when Butte was at the apogee of its growth.
He was most likely well aware and proud of the role he played in the sudden rise and wealth of a city. That was apparent years earlier. In 1894, Owsley formed the Free Silver Club, to which he gave rooms in the Owsley Block. He noted that the social places where “old-timers used to hang out” had disappeared. “They want a place to loaf, and would scorn at being seen around the gambling houses.”
The club was a second home to anyone, rich or poor, who was a miner or prospector in the early diggings. He fitted out the rooms with chairs, card tables, reading materials and a well-stocked sideboard. Plenty of cuspidors were on hand as well. Fifty-three charter members each paid $1.00 initiation and agreed to $1.00 per month dues. There, they could drink and spit and endlessly relive their tales of boom and bust together.
An obituary tribute to William Owsley in the Butte Miner ended by predicting that “his memory ever will be cherished in the annals of this city.” That is generally true of locally powerful figures, until a couple of generations pass. In 1950, Paul Holenstein bought the Owsley Block for $125,000. He then announced plans for renovation and a renaming of it to the Butte Medical Arts Building.
The Holenstein era at Park and Main
Holenstein grew up in Butte, son of parents who owned the Pine Tree dairy. He served in the Army Air Force during World War II. Afterwards, he took classes at the Butte Business College and sold for Newbro Drug Company. This experience led Holenstein to form the Purity Drug Company, combining Main Drug at Park and Main (site of former Lizzie Block) with Purity Drug store of East Park Street. His 1950 plans for the Owsley Block included a new front entrance, with “electric eye doors to replace the revolving ones.” He added trendy Venetian blinds to all office windows. In a philanthropic move, Holenstein offered free office space to a dental clinic in order to serve underprivileged children of Butte.
He promoted himself as an investment advisor and began a string of novel ideas that just needed funding to succeed. The below ad typifies the approach. A come-0n for baby ducks from his Main Drug store catches the eye, and leads it to an investment opportunity below, in which he pitches a pumice building block scheme. Investors might find their dividends taking the form of building materials…like pumice blocks.
Big dreams of parked cars
In 1957, Holenstein set up Prudential Diversified Services and bought several uptown office buildings, including the Hirbour and Lewisohn, with the intention of renting them. A couple of years later, he conceived his grandest plan for uptown. On the empty lot created by a spectacular 1954 fire that took the Butte Hotel on East Broadway, he proposed a modern steel and glass Prudential Arcade Building. A combination retail mall and five level enclosed parking garage, it would contain fourteen new businesses, revitalize the uptown and solve the city’s parking issue.
This new construction would require 1.5 million dollars, and constitute a real stimulus to the community. in late 1960, he promised to begin as soon as clear title to a couple of parcels was in hand. Plans featured a fireproof structure with five floors of parking for 211 cars, various businesses, a sky top restaurant and cocktail lounge and a 24 lane bowling alley.
While still scouting for investors, tenants, and contractors, Holenstein ran into trouble with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. It placed his properties into receivership and Holenstein filed for bankruptcy in 1963. For a time he ran a hotel in Helena, eventually returning to Butte in 1966. He then established Diversified Reality, taking up business in the ground floor corner of his Medical Arts building.
Another dynamo in the Owsley Block
Holenstein also started a business called Downtown Thrift Stamps, and published a paper, the Magicland Citizen, which promoted the Butte area for its business potential and quality of life. As the Montana Standard summarized:
“He devoted much time to tourism for this region. He spoke times without number before clubs and on radio and television to sell what he called ‘a message from Montana to the nation.’”
He was a go-getter, belonging to the Butte Musicians Union, Rotary, American Legion, Toastmasters and Butte Uptown Association. Holenstein served as director of the Butte Chamber of Commerce, Butte Local Development Corporation and KBOW broadcasters group. IN 1973, he even ran for mayor. His was an impressively unconventional campaign, full of dreams and schemes for a rebirth of the city.
Holenstein presented a ten point platform that notably included no tax increases, proposing instead to shrink government to fit the population. (see note #4). This was the crux of his campaign, with an adamant refusal to annex outlying areas to boost taxpayer numbers. He also wanted to tear down the “fire-trap” city hall, moving all city offices to the courthouse. The existing city hall dated to 1882, built during the mayoral term of his real estate predecessor William Owsley.
Another idea was to buy the Butte Water Company from the Anaconda Company. He felt that the fate of the city rested upon assured access to water. There was a proposal to bring back the anti-expectoration law of 1901 and enforce littering laws. He wanted more parking, which was odd, given how quickly uptown fires were creating open space for it. As mayor, he would begin a weekly 15 minute television program where city government reported directly to the citizens of Butte. Holenstein wanted to leverage the Berkeley Pit, World Museum of Mining, birthplace of Evel Knievel, and Butte’s reputation for being the “coldest spot in the country” as tourist draws.
After the vote
He still lost the election, to popular Democrat Mike Micone, who served as mayor from 1969 through 1977. Micone became the last mayor of Butte, and first chief executive of Butte-Silver Bow County when the two merged in 1977. Boosting population was considered the only reasonable way to raise enough taxes to maintain essential services. That same year, the Anaconda Company sold itself to Atlantic Richfield, and the mines began a slowdown that led to total closure in 1983. Spitting on the sidewalks, in retrospect, was far from Butte’s most pressing concern.
It didn’t keep Holenstein from issuing a public statement in his paper, that alleged voting irregularities and suggested creation of a taxpayer’s union. This would be seen as subversive or even mad in most cities, but Butte was “the Gibraltar of unionism.” Everyone was immersed in the union culture. At labor’s high point in 1917, there were locals representing 44 different unions in Butte. It took until 1985 for Butte to get its first McDonalds. Perhaps it was Butte- plausible that taxpayers would have a right to collective bargaining. He never got the chance to try it.
Trials by fire
In the early evening of July 28,1973 a fire broke out in the interconnected buildings of the Owsley Block and burned nearly uncontrolled for hours. Every fire department in the Butte area joined in the attempt to contain it. Records were hurriedly removed from city hall, just up the alley. Police shot out windows of the burning structure with 12 gauge shotguns. The fire department hosed down every nearby roof, as the Medical Arts showered sparks from above. The Butte Water Company reported that the city’s main reservoir level fell by a foot and a half in the attempt to douse everything at the intersection of Park and Main.
It was a weird summer Saturday night in Butte, Montana. A crowd of more than 10,000 stood nearby, watching the blaze and the responders. Nearly as many rubbernecked from parked cars in the area. Mike Babcock of the Montana Standard called it “an atmosphere of freaky holiday.” Police had their hands full controlling the crowd, and some looting occured as nearby businesses evacuated what they could to the street.
Around 10 pm a section of the corner tower fell into the street below, followed shortly by the wall above the men’s shop on Park Street. An hour later, the Hoffman Block next door on Park caved in.
The morning after
Wrecking crews began work to bring the rest down as soon as it was cool enough to do so. The remaining five stories of fire-compromised brick were fragile enough that the Anaconda Company suspended blasting at the Berkeley Pit for two days.
The inferno wrecked several of the Medical Arts building’s neighbors in the Park and Main area. Up went J.C. Penney Shoe Store, Maggie Ann’s Fashions, GAC Finance, Wein’s Mens Store, and Big Sky Optical. 4 North Main and former mayor Jimmie Shea’s insurance office suffered damage beyond repair. Holenstein’s Diversified Realty, which occupied the ground floor corner, was a loss, as were the medical records of doctors and dentists, attorney’s papers and the Montana Power Company land records.
Loss estimates reached $2 million, but Holenstein said the building’s insurance would cover only about one-third of that value. The complete enterprise and records loss of medical professionals and lawyers couldn’t be objectively valued. Three days after the blaze, a mammoth wrecking ball was at work on the remaining walls. Investigators never settled upon a cause.
Flat space with no takers
Holenstein said he expected to rebuild and didn’t want another situation like what occurred after the huge J.C. Penney fire on Park Street a year earlier. Authorities then suspected arson, although two grand juries returned no indictments. The New York financier who owned the building settled for it becoming a city-managed parking lot, with a split from the meter revenue.
A massive inferno on Main Street in 1969 took out the Board of Trade, Donut Shop, Hunter’s Gifts, a jewelry store, Al’s Photo Shop and the Heidelberg Bar. Holenstein and a partner cleared the extensive rubble and put in a metered parking lot, operated on a split revenue basis with the city.
Despite his intentions, the large tract where the Medical Arts Building, or Owsley Block once stood became yet another in a series of fire-inspired parking lots. There didn’t appear to be any demand for new construction on what would be prime lots in any healthy city.
Holenstein quickly took over the old Metals Bank Building, kitty corner from the Medical Arts lot, and moved Diversified Realty there. He thus became a unique part of the Park and Main story by simultaneously owning three of its four corners; a burnt ruin at the northeast, along with Main Rexall Drug on the northwest, and the Metals Bank building on the southwest.
The one unforeseen hitch in Holenstein’s plans was his own death. He fell to cancer at age 57, eight months after the fire that took out his anchor at Park and Main.
A town goes to blazes
In November of the same year as the Medical Arts disaster, the city’s prized recreational area, the Columbia Gardens, somehow caught fire. Most of its structures burned to the ground. The Anaconda Company, which had long financed the amusement park as a civic philanthropy, promptly excavated the site in an expansion of its open pit mine east of the city.
A little over a year later, another fire claimed multiple businesses on West Park very near where the Medical Arts building was: Gamer’s Shoes, Diana Shops and Gene’s Furs, in addition to a Chevrolet shop on adjacent Galena Street.
Ten months after that, on August 20, 1975, the residential Pennsylvania Block at 44 West Park burned. And three years later, the twin architectural treasures of Silver Bow Block and Inter Mountain building.
Parking lots abounded in the 1970s. Sites which were formerly Penney’s, Medical Arts Building, and Pennsylvania Block were all cleared. The Park and Main area came to resemble an old hockey player’s smile. There was irony in the sudden availability of parking uptown, as Holenstein had once championed the mother of all parking lots, the Arcade Mall, before fire became a clear trend uptown.
A light goes on at Park and Main
In 2015, NorthWestern Energy, successor to Montana Power as Butte’s electric utility, heralded a rebirth of the old Owsley corner. It built a solid and good looking five story headquarters on the site. This was the first major business construction uptown in over fifty years. Before the Prudential Federal Savings (now D.A. Davidson) was built in 1965, the most recent commercial structure of major size was the Finlen Hotel, a full forty years earlier. Butte had slid a lot since the lofty days of limitless expansion during World War I. It felt good for the community to reverse that tide, if only for this single bright instance at Park and Main.
It was also a case of completing a historical electric circuit. William Owsley started the Phoenix Electric Light and Steam Heating Company in the basement of the Owsley Block. That company merged into the Butte Power Company, then Montana Power, and in time, Northwestern Energy, It built on the ground where the Owsley Block stood, literally growing from where it was first planted.
Notes
Note 1 – Placer mining was that done on a very small scale with water and a pan, or larger, with a sluice and rocker box to separate gold from dirt and sand. Either way, it required water, and Butte did not have much. Controlling access to it was valuable in itself. ‘Placer’ is contrasted with hard rock mining, as was done in the following silver and copper booms. It demanded digging, blasting stamping and roasting granite to extract its metal content. The capital-intensive nature of this kind of mining required deep pockets, which brought in the big players who eventually exploited the potential wealth of the Butte hill.
Note 2 – Mayors of Butte stuck together in the early days. That, or members of a group of business associates took turns being mayor. W.R. Kenyon of the Kenyon-Connell store was mayor in 1887 and 1889. As indicated, Owsley ran the city in 1882 and 1884. Owsley’s livery partner H.G. Valiton served as Butte’s second mayor in 1880; elected once again in 1890. Lee Mantle even got his turn in 1892.
Note 3 – Patrick Largey was president of the State Savings Bank, kitty-corner from the Owsley Block at Park and Main. More about him appears in the essay regarding the southeast corner of this intersection. J. Ross Clark was brother of, and partner to W.A. Clark in banking, railroading and sugar production. He bought the Kenyon-Connell hardware holdings from the Largey estate in 1897. This was a year before a man injured in an 1894 explosion at the Kenyon-Connell warehouse burst into Largey’s office at Park and Main and shot him dead.
Note 4 – Butte had 22,000 residents in 1973. Population figures for the city were difficult to determine. Early miners were transient and boarding house operators tended to be vague as to occupant numbers. Sometimes three men would take a room and sleep as they worked- in shifts. The city’s peak population was probably in 1917, at not less than 80,000, although some estimates reached 100,000. City employee numbers were disproportionately large for a city that had shrunk nearly 75% by 1973.
Resources
A good biography of Lee Mantle exists at Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Mantle
Description of Owsley Block, circa 1885, from Dick Gibson for the Verdigris Project at https://www.verdigrisproject.org/butte-americas-story-blog/butte-americas-story-episode-71-the-owsley-block
Formation of new electric light company from Butte Daily Post; February 26, 1894; Incorporation of new company in Butte Miner; June 30, 1895; Contract to heat the new post office, from same paper; October 4, 1895.
Obituaries from the Labor Bulletin of April 19., 1919 and Butte Miner of the same date shine a light on the life and accomplishments of William Owsley.
A timeline of early Butte mayors appeared in the Montana Standard of May 25, 1941.
Sophronius Marchesseau was another of Butte’s original mining settlers. He lived a long time and told many tales for posterity. Some of them appear in the Butte Evening News of December 18, 1905, and inform some of the background for earliest beginnings of Park and Main streets.
Further resources
Paul Holenstein and the birth of the Medical Arts idea was from the Montana Standard of February 5, 1950.
Some detail on the proposed Prudential Arcade building from the Montana Standard of November 6, 1960.
Holenstein’s SEC difficulties from the Montana Standard of March 1, 1963.
Dependably accurate historian Dick Gibson wrote a brief history of the Owsley Block for the Montana Standard of May 20, 2016.
An excellent revisit of the 1973 fire was provided by Tracy Thornton for the Montana Standard of July 26, 2020. Closer to the source was reporting by Rick Foote of the same newspaper in its July 30, 1973 edition.
Paul Holenstein’s platform for Butte mayor is in his own paper, the Magicland Citizen of February 1, 1973. His open letter recommending creation of a taxpayers union, among other beefs, was from the same paper on June 3, 1973
The side by side photos (before and after) of the Medical Arts Building fire are thanks to (left) Montana Standard and (right) Butte Silver Bow Archives. They appeared in the Montana Standard of July 26, 2020.
Paul Holenstein’s death notice appeared in the Montana Standard of March 29, 1974.
Photo of the new Northwestern Energy headquarters at Park and Main from Mosaic Architecture of Helena, MT. Website at https://www.mosaicarch.com/projects/work/northwestern-energy-montana-general-office/
A related essay concerns the two businesses adjacent to the Owsley Block, and north of it – Spillum’s and 4 North Main. https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/?p=4286
