Bozeman’s premier architect Fred Willson designed this double storefront building with three apartments upstairs in 1928. Known for his versatility and customer-pleasing plans, Willson worked on other downtown projects that year as well, including remodeling the Bon Ton Bakery and designing the elegant Baxter Hotel. This Spanish Revival style building shares design elements with both of these Willson projects. Like the Baxter, it has grouped, hood-molded windows and ornamental rosettes. Like the Bon Ton, it features stucco siding and a Mediterranean tiled roof that breaks through a decorative parapet. Ornamental wrought iron beneath the second-story windows mimics balconies, evoking sunny California, the epicenter of Spanish Revival. The cosmopolitan building surely suited owners B. A. Dixon and Bernal Alexander, who needed to attract style-conscious customers to their stores: Dixon’s Painters and Decorators and Alexander Art Co. Dixon and Alexander hired Willson again in 1940 to modernize the façade by replacing the original marquee with a Streamline Moderne design. In 2010, new owners remodeled once more, using the original blueprints and historic photographs to match, as closely as possible, the 1928 marquee.
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