John M. Lucy’s furniture store and undertaking business was twenty years old when he had this building constructed for it in 1909. By then, the Irish immigrant (who had arrived in Montana as a workhand building the final leg of the Northern Pacific Railroad) had been joined in business by his sons John J. and Abbott. Their family firm continued to own the Lucy Building until 1963. The structure was designed by Missoula’s premier architect of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, A. J. Gibson. It is one of the best examples of his commercial design, as well as an emblem of Missoula’s second major period of post-railroad economic development and growth. The building’s original features include brick patterned quoined corners and polychromed belt courses above and below the upstairs windows. Its most outstanding original feature is the projecting welded metal cornice, with molded fascia and modillions and dentils.
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