Bay-fronted flats with large, two-story porches were a popular solution to Butte’s housing shortage. The city boasted over two hundred of these characteristically urban buildings by 1920, with the majority constructed before 1910. The bay windows brought light and air into the apartments, while the second-story porch provided upstairs residents with ready access to the out-of-doors. Saloonkeeper and neighbor J. E. Lynch was an early owner of this fourplex, constructed between 1900 and 1907. Intended for middle-class residents, the building boasted Tuscan columns on the porch, window transoms with diamond-shaped leaded panes, and attractive brick corbelling along the roofline. In 1910, residents included a Christian Science practitioner, a wholesale tea merchant, and a bookkeeper. Unlike later apartment buildings, the bay-fronted flat features exclusive entrances to each residence. Private entrances represented a compromise between the necessity of sharing a building and the prejudice against apartment living. A common entryway would have been more space efficient, but the separate doorways provided greater privacy in imitation of single-family homes.
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