Dr. Robert G. Redd served as an army surgeon at Fort Keogh in the 1870s. Redd resigned in 1881 to assume a private practice. He served as county physician, coroner, and surgeon for the Northern Pacific Railroad as well as mayor from 1889 to 1900. He commissioned architect Byron Vreeland to design a two-story permanent building for his drug store. Henry C. Smith—mayor from 1911 to 1913—purchased the edifice in 1908 and contracted with city engineer Grover C. Pruett to remodel the façade in 1915. The marble and terra cotta Renaissance Revival style of the building was rare in Miles City and Smith used it to advertise the city’s cosmopolitan attributes in the early twentieth century. “1915” adorns a terra cotta rectangle above the windows and the entrance bears a polychrome mosaic tile floor arranged in the image of a pocket watch. Although remodeling obliterated the original façade, the original 1883 corbelling remains on the east side.
Images
