Cruising East out of Bozeman, and coming back, I always see this whale off to the side of the highway. I finally tracked them down and shot them, and they bring up more questions than they answer.  They appear to be made out of sculpted foam, coated in some kind of stucco.  The whale and the sphinx are both inhabitable, with a skylight visible there in the whale photo.  Play houses for an artist’s children?

Val’s Alpine Bar – 2806 Pine St, Butte, MT

I would love to know what the Alpine looked like when it was new. It’s a great curved building. My guess would be it was originally white stucco, and that the siding came along later, but that’s just a guess.

Great old neon, with mountains wearing a Tyrolean hat. The sign is located in a park attached to the bar, just across the parking lot. The bushes, which once provided a bit of privacy to the park, now have grown to the point where they nearly obscure the sign.

Some shots of the interior of the Alpine. It’s for sale for $285,000. http://www.markovichinc.com/bin/web/real_estate/AR82693/ACTIVATE_FRAMES/COMMERCIAL_LISTINGS/Butte/1411074861.html

Here’s an exciting find from Walkerville, up above Butte. With the “66 Years of Public Service”, it puts the date of painting around 1935. There are a few layers of different ghost signs visible one on top of another,  but it’s hard to say what the other layers are. At some point, likely in the ’60s or ’70s the building was nearly completely remodeled, with a metal facade and stucco and brick sides, studded out from the original brick structure. The parapet is crumbling, and likely contributed to the renovations. It appears the building was for sale several years back, and presumably was sold, as the renovations have been largely stripped off, exposing the historic building inside.

It looks like this one’s been out of business for a while, but with the glass brick windows and heavy door, this was formerly a bar. Before then, it was the Walkerville Mercantile Company, with a partially exposed ghost sign on the opposite side of the building identifying it as such. It’s a solid brick building and originally had arched windows and an arched doorway on the ground floor. There is a faint ghost sign at the top that reads “Family Liquors”. This is located at the corner of North Main St. and West Daly.

I love Google Maps’s new time-machine feature. Here’s a shot from 2012 of the same building showing some particularly ugly remodeling. It did, however, protect the ghost signs, which otherwise would likely have faded considerably more by now. The other side, with the Walkerville Mercantile and another Bull Durham Tobacco sign, were also studded out and stuccoed/bricked over. That covering has been partially removed.

The building of the Club 13 was built in the 1880s and renovated into its current form, with corner door, porcelain enamel facade, and glass brick, in the 1930s. The blue is so striking against the skies we have out here.

The backside is probably my favorite alley in Butte.  So many textures, from the ghost signs, from staining, from 80 year old graffiti carved into the bricks, replaced sections of brick, voids left from removed fire escapes.  A lot going on.

With the rise of refrigeration and the demise of iceboxes and block ice, an old fashioned ice house like this is a surprising find. It’s a typology from another era, another way of day to day life.

A photo of a different ice loading bay from Shorpy.com, showing what this kind of setup would have been like 80 years ago.

The Iona Cafe Building was built in 1914, becoming the Iona in 1915. Though the building only housed the Iona Bakery and Cafe for two years, with the building becoming the State Cafe in 1917, it still bears the name in tilework in the entryway. 

A 1979 photo, with the building still bearing signage from its time as the State Cafe, from the Historic American Buildings Survey.  http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/mt0040.photos.101070p/

In 1971-1972, the transom windows on the second floor and the right side door (now gone, but visible in the 1979 photo) were painted by Dan G. Buller, then owner of the State and resident of the apartment above.  Buller died in 1973 and the cafe closed.  The cafe was opened in 1905 by his father, George Buller on East Park Street before moving to this location at 16 S. Main.

The panels read:

“The Big Sky Country Butte Montana Hello! Hello! Hello! to all the tourists and visitors welcome to our beautiful city Butte where the best Americans is Butte has the richest hill and the best copper on earth – finished July 11, 1972”

“Big Sky Country Butte Montana – Wonderful W-ful W-ful to have visitors from all over the American Adn from all over the world to visit our best city of America Butte”

“Big Sky Country Butte Montana Attention please when the visitors are visiting the famous state of Montana our capital the Helena and our city the Butte they are visiting the best places in America”

The door, which is no longer on the building, but is visible in the 1979 photos, read,
“Butte Has the Best People in American Butte has the best copper in the world Butte has the largest pit in the world Butte has the best and the richest hill on earth Big Sky Country Butte Mont 20-1/2 So. Main Street Butte Montana 59701 Mail Box Birth place the best place Always!  Butte is the best city in American Butte best street is the South Main Street July 21 1971 Designed Fixed by Dan G. Buller.

A really incredible (though very damaged) interior, complete with enclosed booths for ladies.

The Washoe was designed in 1930 by Benjamin Marcus Priteca, with interiors by Nat Smythe. It opened in 1936. My timing was off when I visited, but I need to catch a movie at it one day. The interiors are unreal, and others agree, with the Smithsonian rating as the 5th best in the country for its architectural value, and it making it on the National Register for Historic Places in 1982.