The 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego raised the profile of the Mission style, and the style became popular among cosmopolitan Montanans through the 1930s. Built in 1909, this two-story Mission Style home, patterned on Southern California’s Spanish missions, was ahead of the trend. Burr and Jennie Fisher hired Montana’s premier architectural firm of Link and Haire to design their new home on a lot the couple purchased from Burr’s parents, who lived next door. Architect Fred Willson, then working for Link and Haire, likely led the project. Praised by the newspaper as “one of the most unique as well as prettiest residences in Bozeman,” the home featured stuccoed and painted brick-bearing walls, an arcaded porch with large arched openings, a curvilinear gable, and a hipped roof originally covered with Spanish clay tiles. A large brick double fireplace with thick wooden mantels, a built-in buffet, and oak-beamed and coffered ceilings show the architect’s attention to detail. Much of the original interior details survived and have been restored. In 1912, the Fishers moved to San Francisco. Dr. J. Franklin Blair, who established the Blair Sanitarium, a forerunner of the present-day Bozeman hospital, lived here from c. 1919 to 1927. The residence later became student housing, first for the sorority Pi Beta Phi and then, in 1939, as the “Men’s Coop,” under the ownership of the Montana State College Student Housing Association. The Association provided low-income housing, mostly for students, until 1983. That year, a new owner purchased the by-then dilapidated building and remodeled it once again into a single-family home.
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