Butte Tours

Yesterday Anne-Marie and I went on a walking tour of the Dellinger Building and surrounding buildings that are or once were a part of old downtown Butte Montana. Our guide on this walk was Dick Gibson, who is a geologist, historian, and has many other achievements, in addition to an author of two books on local butte history. We circled the block and he had stories and historical facts on the buildings on both sides of the street and even on the trolley cars and tracks, including early paving and curbing materials, (Granite). The early paving material that was used was granite blocks, about the size of a loaf of bread, and in some places the roadbed here in town has been built up over five feet.

The Gas Company has the alley behind all dug up, but the picture shows the over the alley walkway to a little three story building and a newer piece of metal covering what was a door to an open stairway that led to the third floor sleeping rooms, suspected of being a brothel. All three floors had no internal access up or down, only outside access.

The buildings that were destroyed by fire, and the buildings that replaced them, and the owners stories are fascinating, The Leggat, Fire Proof, Hotel, the tallest in the distance, was built on the site of a Opera House that burned in the late 1800s, and Mark Twain is supposed to have preformed there.

Upstairs in the Dellinger building, inaccessible since 1938, has many original items left in place since it was boarded off. The building was built with light wells, tall windows and skylights, to maximize natural light, before electricity was reliable.The Dellinger Law Offices were in very rough shape when the building owners accessed them. The large items were found in place, chairs, file cabinets, desks, bookshelves, and the smaller items were brought in from other local sites.

The hallway had a round hot water radiant heater; I haven’t seen one of these before.

The law office was even equipped with a phone and it was in a booth for privacy. The early directories show only three digit numbers.

The lighting in the building was very sparse, and only the larger rooms had two bare light bulbs, the smaller offices had but just one light bulb, and all were operated by their own pull string.

Last night Anne-Marie and I had Chinese food at the Pekin Noodle Parlors. This restaurant has been operating continuously on the second floor of this same building for 101 years. The center door of this building leads to the restaurants stairs.

An unusual feature of the restaurant is that it has dining booths for privacy, and the wait staff has roller carts used to deliver dinner to the patrons. The restaurant is only open at 5 PM for dinner.