The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink About321 E Main 2006 MONTANA HISTORIC PROPERTY RECORD For the Montana National Register of Historic Places Program and State Antiquities Database Montana State Historic Preservation Office Montana Historical Society PO Box 201202, 1410 8th Ave Helena,MT 59620-1202 Property Address: 321 E. Main St. i Site Number: 24 GA 1739 (An historic district number may also apply.) Historic Address(if applicable): i i City/Town: Bozeman i County: Gallatin i i Historic Name: Bozeman Hotel ! Legal Location i Original Owner(s): PM: Montana Township: 2S Range: 6E i Current Ownership ® Private ❑Public SE '/a SE '/< NW '/a of Section: 7 Current Property Name: Lot(s): portion Lots 15-23 Owner(s): Block(s): D Owner Address: Addition: Original Townsite Year of Addition: 1870 USGS Quad Name: Bozeman, MT Year: 1987 Phone: i Historic Use: hotel '; UTM Reference wr vw.nri.s.state.mt.us./tonofinder2 Current Use: retail '; ❑NAD 27(preferred) ®NAD 83 i Construction Date: 1891 ❑Estimated ® Actual Zone: 12 Easting: 497478 Northing: 5058455 ®Original Location ❑Moved Date Moved: i ._.._.._.._ _._.._._ - _.._.._.._._.._.._.._..-.._.._------- .. .—.—._.._.._.._.._.._.._.._.._.._.._.._.._.._._.._.._.._.._---..---------------- i National Register of Historic Places Date of this document: March 2006 i NRHP Listing Date: 1886 Form Prepared by: Mark Hufstetler, Renewable Technologies, Inc. Historic District: Main Street(Bozeman); 24GA952 i Address: 511 Metals Bank Bldg., Butte, MT 59701 NRHP Eligible: ®Yes ❑No Daytime Phone: 406-782-0494 i MT SHPO USE ONLY Comments: Eligible for NRHP: ❑yes ❑no Criteria: ❑A ❑B ❑ C ❑D Date: i Evaluator: MONTANA HISTORIC PROPERTY RECORD PAGE 2 Property Name: 321 E. Main St. Site Number: 24 GA 1739 ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION ❑ See Additional Information Page Architectural Style: Romanesque If Other,specify: Property Type: Tourism Specific Property Type: hotel Architect: George Hancock Architectural Firm/City/State: Builder/Contractor: Campbell and Davitt Company/City/State: Source of Information: Concisely,accurately,and completely describe the property and alterations with dates. Number the buildings and features to correlate with the Site Map. The Bozeman Hotel is a four-story commercial building on the northwest corner of Main Street and Rouse Avenue. Originally constructed in 1891 as a hotel, the building now houses a variety of retail and office spaces. The building faces Main Street, with a secondary fagade on Rouse. Much of the west elevation is a common wall with an adjacent commercial building. A square tower area on the southeast corner of the building adds a partial fifth story there. The interior of this fifth story area has been enlarged somewhat in recent times. The hotel rests on a mortared rubblestone foundation, and includes a basement. Exterior walls are of a soft, bearing brick, laid in a common bond. The roof is flat, behind parapet walls. The parapet area is decorated with a projecting, dentiled cornice. Low pediments at the center of the south and west elevations display lettering reading "THE BOZEMAN." These pediments cap slightly-projecting center bays that enframe the building's primary entrances. Fenestration patterns on the two main elevations are regular. Windows are tall and narrow, most holding historically- appropriate one-over-one double-hung units. First floor doors are modern, but in historic openings. Door and window openings on the first floor and the top (fourth or fifth floor) have continuous, round-top brick cornices. Art glass fills the round-top portion of many first-floor window openings. The lintels and flat cornices are of stone. Little historic fabric remains in the building's interior. MONTANA HISTORIC PROPERTY RECORD PAGE Pro erty Name: 321 E. Main St. Site Number: 24 GA 1739 HISTORY OF PROPERTY ❑ See Additional Information Page One of the two major city landmarks in Bozeman, the Hotel Bozeman is both a building of major architectural significance in the district and an historical milestone of the late nineteenth century. The vernacular Romanesque style building, with its prominent corner tower, was the keystone of three monumental buildings at the corner of Main Street and Rouse Avenue that within three years had added a taste of urban formality to what was still basically a rural community. The Tilton Building was completed in 1889 at the northeast corner of Main Street and Rouse Ave., and had a corner tower that counterbalanced that of the Bozeman. The City Hall and Opera House, built at the southwest corner in 1890, were equally impressive. On March 2, 1891, a grand opening celebration for the Hotel Bozeman drew 500 people, or one-tenth of the city's population The first class hotel, considered an indispensable amenity of any respectable city, was a community effort. A total of $20,000 had been raised by local citizens as a "cash bonus," which helped to lure an optimistic group of Boston capitalists, who in turn put up $100,000. The building ended up costing $130,000. The Hotel Bozeman boasted 136 rooms, call bells, balconies, steam heat, fire escapes, a 2000 lb. capacity elevator, a "brilliantly lighted" lobby, reading room, dining room to seat 150, barber shop, and a ladies' parlor with a private entrance and stair. Bozeman may have considered itself a city, but the unpaved streets were so rough and muddy that a carpeted walkway was built for the opening celebration, connecting the second floor of the grand, new hotel with the second floor of the Opera House. In this way, the women's formal gowns would not get soiled when crossing from one building to the next. Despite the initial enthusiasm, the Hotel Bozeman floundered financially over the next several years, first under the management of Geroge W.Wakerfield, and later others. A general financial depression in the mid-1890s may have been responsible in part for these difficulties. About 30 years later, the Bozeman no longer met first class standards and planning began for another large, community-sponsored hotel, the Baxter, which rose in 1928 to terminate the opposite end of the district. In 1974, the Bozeman, which had a bus station in the first floor, was thoroughly renovated into a mall containing several shops, craft studios, and a restaurant. Very little interior historic fabric survived the renovation, the few exceptions being a carved stair(though it appears to have been moved), part of the pressed tin lobby ceiling, and several cast iron structural posts with Corinthian capitals. The entire building was sandbalasted, and repointed with wide, gray mortar, rather than the original thin, tinted mortar. The balconies may have been removed at that time as well. INFORMATION SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY ❑ See Additional Information Page "Historic Resources of Bozeman," National Regsiter nomination, p. 8.12 Montana Historical and Architectural Inventory form for Hotel Bozeman, 1985 (revision), on file, Montana State Historic Preservation Office, Helena. Cortlandt L. Freeman, The Growing Up Years, The First 100 Years of Bozeman as an Incorporated City from 1883 to 1983, in "Bozeman Montana" (Bozeman: Gallatin County Historical Society, 1988), 73. MONTANA HISTORIC PROPERTY RECORD PAGE 4 Property Name: 321 E. Main St. Site Number: 24 GA 1739 NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES NRHP Listing Date: 1986 NRHP Eligibility: ®Yes ❑No ®Individually ® Contributing to Historic District ❑Noncontributing to Historic District NRHP Criteria: ®A ❑B ® C ❑D Area of Significance: Period of Significance: STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE ❑ See Additional Information Page The Bozeman Hotel is the largest nineteenth-century commercial building in Bozeman, and has been a major downtown landmark since its construction in 1891. Construction of the building reflected the period of optimism and growth that characterized the city in the years after the 1883 construction of the Northern Pacific Railway through the Gallatin Valley The building's design is highly representative of late nineteenth-century commercial architecture in the small towns of the American West. Largely utilitarian in overall form, the building's importance is reflected by the subtle Italianate and Romanesque detailing applied to the two primary facades. The simple corner tower of the hotel is a further embellishment of the building's role as an anchor for the town's historic commericial district. The Bozeman Hotel building is listed on National Register of Historic Places as a (primary) contributing element in the Bozeman Main Street Historic District, listed in 1986. INTEGRITY(location, design,setting,materials,workmanship,feeling, association) ❑ See Additional Information Page The Bozeman Hotel displays a high level of integrity overall, retaining all seven National Register aspects of integrity. The only substantive alterations to the building's exterior are non-historic door units (in historic openings), and the small addition to the fifth-floor"tower" area. The latter change does not visually impact the building's primary(south) fagade, and is only minimally visible on the east fagade. MONTANA HISTORIC PROPERTY RECORD PHOTOGRAPHS Property Name: 321 E. Main St. Site Number: 24 GA 1739 'io W, - rFFr�. I - Y 7�Sr F I � - � �• �- x' ` 3 �:-". w .1 View to north. Allm F View to northwest. MONTANA HISTORIC PROPERTY RECORD SITE MAP Property Name: 321 East Main St Site Number: 24GA1739 I L I J \ N E Mendenhall St N fD I� I� T. I I I I I I ---------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------- -------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------" -------------------------------------- z 0 y CD (�D 321 E Main St I 0 c ti _ m 0 60 120 Feet Building outlines depicted on this map are ---------------------------------------- approximate. They may not necessarily reflect current conditions,and are for --"--"----"--""-""""-"-'--"-------'-"- illustration purposes only. MONTANA HISTORIC PROPERTY RECORD TOPOGRAPHIC MAP Property Name: 321 East Main St Site Number: 24GA1739 IF Oil WT I was / 33 p /)• �x 41S9AT� aqAPer •. 1 • t r,' � '`� a 1, 1 ,^_ • r w L1.7 OEM I go -- USGS Topographic Quadrangle, 1:24000 scale Bozeman, Montana (1987) Section 7, T2S R6E