As one of the first paved streets in Missoula, South Third Street West became a desirable middle-class address and a major thoroughfare in the 1890s. Electric lights lit the street at night and by 1894, a horse-drawn streetcar provided public transportation; fifteen years later an electric trolley replaced the streetcar. C. N. Nelson purchased this lot in 1906 for $400 and, by 1910, Herbert Bickenbach, superintendent of the Missoula Street Railway Company, lived here with his wife Helen and daughter Senta while building a home on Central Avenue. The bracketed cornice and pedimented front porch supported by incised wood columns embody key characteristics of this foursquare Colonial Revival home. Foursquare refers to the floorplan, which features four, roughly equal-size rooms on each floor. Frank and Jessie Cool lived here with their four grown children between 1913 and 1917. Missoulian typesetter and printer Thomas Weaver, wife Mary, two daughters, and a boarder lived here between 1918 and 1920. Shoe store owner Ralph Ogg, his wife Etta, and three children lived here between 1930 and 1945.
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