Determined to bring the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad to Miles City, land developer, cattleman, and banker Lorenzo Stacy organized his fellow businessmen to secure and donate property for the railroad’s right-of-way. In 1908, the Milwaukee Road arrived, rewarding their efforts; that same year Stacy hired local architect Brynjulf Rivenes to design an elegant, if isolated home on the eighty acres he owned at the edge of Miles City. Rivenes’ eclectic design featured such classical details as a monumental, two-story back porch (enclosed in the 1920s) and a balustraded front porch with a central one-story portico; its hipped dormers, wide eaves, and Spanish roof tiles reflected the newly fashionable Prairie style. The “commodious and attractive residence of modern architectural design” did not remain isolated for long. The Milwaukee Railroad delivered the predicted boom, and Stacy found a ready market for lots. By 1915, when Stacy sold land to the city for Wibaux Park, his house had been joined by many others, and East Main Street had become home to Miles City’s most fashionable residences.
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