The Beaux Arts style building complex comprising the county courthouse and jail serves to firmly anchor Butte’s business district. Montana’s most distinguished architects of the period, Link and Haire, designed both the courthouse and this substantial three-story jail. The steel frame, brick, and stone structure, erected in 1909, for a time served as the courthouse until the new building opened in 1912. An underground tunnel connects the two structures. A Smithsonian exhibition of Teddy Roosevelt’s African trophies provided the model for ten terra cotta lions’ heads beneath the building’s wide cornice.
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