Cooper Park Historic District

6 Locations | Curated by Historic Montana

Impetus for the development of this late-blooming district began in 1890 with Bozeman's bid for designation as state capital. Instead, Bozeman received the state's agricultural college, built approximately where the hoped-for capitol complex would have been in 1893. Although the streets between Main Street and the college had long ago been platted and named, the area remained a "golden sea of wheat" bypassed by the trolley tracks. By 1904, a sprinkling of Queen Anne and Colonial Revival style pattern book houses dotted the area. The Gallatin Valley Railway linked Bozeman and rural communities in 1909 as Bozeman became increasingly diversified. An extensive middle class of service providers and agricultural employees needing housing began to emerge. Bungalows, easy to build and thus affordable, yet considered "modern" with bathrooms, built-in furniture, and central heating, were the perfect solution. Using mail-order blueprints, local builders like Elmer Bartholomew, William Cline, and G. A. Ensinger added practical bungalows and cottages to the pattern book repertoire of older residences. A wealth of features like exposed brackets, porches, different roof types and surface textures lend the district a Progressive Era character. These and the district's older homes form a true "pattern book anthology." With Cooper Park and the diverse 1930s homes around it as a focal point, the district's 250 homes on pleasant tree-lined streets comprise Bozeman's largest historic residential area.

Five Queen Anne style cottages, among the first in the Cooper Park neighborhood, lined this side of the block in 1904. All five, similar in size and setting, are the product of mail order blue prints and form the first chapter of the district’s interesting “pattern book anthology. ” Lumberman Noble…
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Open fields of wheat once stretched in front of this home built by carpenter Amos R. Howerton and his brother circa 1903. Its steeply pitched gables and gracious wraparound porch are hallmarks of the eclectic Queen Anne style. On its prominent corner, the home presided over the rural neighborhood.…
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A few Queen Anne style pattern book cottages like this classic example dotted Cooper Park neighborhoods in the late nineteenth century. Predating the later bungalows that comprise the majority of homes in the district, its Victorian-era roots are easily detected. Plain and fish scale shingles,…
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