Prominent Butte architect Henry M. Patterson designed this attractive two-flat apartment building in 1899. Patterson’s commissions included numerous homes and business blocks for Butte’s wealthiest citizens. His design for this multi-family building reflects his care in making it fit harmoniously among the ornately decorated single-family homes on both sides of the street. Intended for middle-class tenants, the building features private entrances, distinctive oval windows, a central curved bay, and an intricate corbelled (stepped) parapet. Inside, the apartments offered similar amenities to the well-appointed homes nearby, including high ceilings, hardwood floors, spindlework stair railings, and sitting rooms in the master bedrooms. Various skilled professionals and business owners rented the units, sometimes subletting bedrooms to boarders. Early tenants included a stockbroker and his family, a telegraph operator, a newspaper reporter, and a mine manager. Drugstore owner Howard Rockefeller of Paxson & Rockefeller Drugs lived at No. 809 from 1910 to 1913 with his wife Pearl, son Howard Jr., and housemaid Lena Lindquist. Edwin S. Bartlett, president of the Sheepshearers’ Union of North America, lived with his family at No. 811 in 1918.
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