When William Zartrow built a home for confectioner Charles Reinig in 1889, he used “good, sound, hard and well burned brick, the best that the market affords.” The result was an elegant two-story duplex with tall, Victorian chimneys, narrow windows, and a two-story front porch. During construction Charles and Helena Reinig lived in a small house that still stands behind the main building. The Reinigs had no trouble finding tenants for their building’s north half; Helena’s booming population had created a housing shortage in the late 1880s. Later, they rented the north side to their daughter, Frances, and her husband, Peter Guillot. Members of both the Reinig and Guillot families still lived here in 1935, when the Helena earthquakes hit. The quakes left a large gaping hole in place of the second-story façade, tore out the first-floor windows, and reduced the original front porch to rubble. Rather than demolish the building, the Reinigs remodeled. They transformed the duplex into four apartments (now six), replaced the brick with wood siding, and added fashionable multi-pane windows to update the facade.
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