Early Red Lodge businessmen James Blackburn and Dominic Marino jointly built this fine two-story commercial building circa 1905 to house a mercantile business. A series of saloons later occupied the ground floor. An upstairs boarding house, first advertised as The Pleasanton in 1909, operated until the 1940s. According to local lore, The Pleasanton was a popular house of ill-repute, and its sign in the window boasting steam heated rooms became a long-standing joke among the town’s young people. Severe fire damage to the interior occurred in the 1970s, but something of the building’s original frontier elegance remains in the pressed tin ceiling that still adorns the first floor. The upper façade, with its well-worn nameplate, is one of the best-preserved examples of rusticated cut sandstone within the historic district.
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