As Butte boomed from 3,300 people in 1880 to over 20,000 in 1890 and over 45,000 in 1900, rentals remained in great demand. Built before 1891, this two-story brick building, which now houses four units, originally contained eight separate apartments. A large, open front porch (now enclosed) and a second porch that ran the entire length of the Jackson Street façade ornamented the exterior. In 1910, fifty-six-year-old widow Martha York served as the apartment house’s landlady, supporting four children, ages twelve to twenty-one. In addition to the Yorks, the building was home to an undertaker and his family (including four children), a copper miner and his wife, and four male lodgers. Mary Kelly, also a widow, ran the apartment in 1920. Because mining was such a dangerous occupation, Butte was known as a city of widows and orphans; running boardinghouses or apartments offered widowed women a way to support themselves without leaving home. The apartment’s residents reflected Butte’s diversity: the Irish-born Kelly rented to American-born, Irish, Bohemian, and Finnish tenants, whose occupations ranged from hod-carrier and miner to sheepshearer, electrician, waitress, and housekeeper.
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