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.”
Redoubtable chief Jere Murphy (shown in a 1906 photo) and a squad of detectives raided Board of Trade in 1919. This was during Prohibition and the object then was alcohol. A search of patrons delivered up a number of whiskey bottles hidden in pockets. The manger and bartenders were arrested, tried, fined and released.
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
Its vertical sign on the corner of Park and Main was 40 feet high with 1,200 bulbs. The entire white terra cotta exterior gleamed at night. Featured on opening night was ‘America’s Sweetheart,’ Mary Pickford in “ Poor Little Rich Girl.” A nineteen piece orchestra backed the movie, as the organ had not yet arrived. When it did, famed Disney composer Oliver G. Wallace played a ninety minute recital to a full house
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
Blessed with a great location and easy access by trolley, bus or cab, the Rialto thrived. It was symbiotic with the businesses around it, shoppers popping in for a matinee, then going across the street to dinner, or out for a drink. A regular commercial ecosystem. In December of 1939, the WPA tallied foot traffic uptown. Park and Main took the title of busiest intersection in Butte. Between 10am and 6pm, an average of 27,690 pedestrians used the four crosswalks daily. It was not to last.
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.
