Real estate and insurance agent Charles Griffith arrived in Kalispell in 1891, four months after the Great Northern Railway established the town. An important member of the young community, Griffith served as city treasurer and was a founding member of the 1892 Kalispell Volunteer Fire Department. Sometime between 1891 and 1897, Griffith built a relatively small one-and-one-half story home on what would become one of the city’s most prominent corners. After 1903 but before 1910, Griffith and his wife, Ella, dramatically expanded the residence, adding a large, two-story addition to the front of the house and a smaller, one-story addition to the northeast corner. When the Griffiths sold the residence in 1918, it became home to Frances McGee, the Kalispell Bee’s local and society editor. Charles D. and Agnes Conrad lived here by 1922. President of the Conrad National Bank from 1920 through his death in 1941, Charles D. was the son of the prominent Charles E. Conrad, whose mansion across the street is now a museum. Members of the Conrad family lived in both homes into the 1960s.
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