Dorothy’s Rooms Part 2

The demise of Dorothy’s business partly came about because of her civic conscience. Downtown Helena was seedy and deteriorating, and Dorothy hoped to set a good example. In the fall of 1972, she received a $500 federal Urban Renewal grant to refurbish her building. Aspiring politicians saw publicity about Dorothy’s property as detrimental to Helena’s reputation. An undercover officer visited Dorothy’s Rooms. He maintained that she sold him a drink without a liquor license. He then paid twenty dollars to watch a girl “take off her clothes and roll around on the bed.”  That was enough for the county attorney, who alleged that Dorothy Baker’s rooming house was being used “for the purpose of lewdness, assignation, and prostitution.”

Vintage clothing owned by Big Dorothy's employees from the Montana Historical Society collection.

Dorothy had survived other raids in 1963, 1969, and 1970 by simply ignoring the charges. The district judge therefore ordered law enforcement to remove the occupants and secure the premises.  One outraged citizen blamed the afternoon raid on the “the asinine morality of a pipsqueak.”  Letters supporting Dorothy poured in to the Helena Independent Record.  “You lost your best tourist attraction,” one out-of-towner lamented, “and a true asset to your town when you put the heat on the law to close Dorothy Baker’s.” One woman voiced her own father’s observation that “a town without a whore house [is] a stupid place in which to live.” But on May 14, before Dorothy Baker could have her day in court, she died suddenly in a Great Falls hospital. Her passing was widely noted, and a female legislator, also named Dorothy, proposed designating Dorothy’s Rooms an historical landmark. By 1976, Ida Levy’s old Silver Dollar Bar had become Big Dorothy’s Saloon. Today, the popular Windbag Saloon and Grill and the Ghost Art Gallery in the St. Louis Block, and Lasso the Moon toy store in the Boston Block, are downtown anchors. Offices and a frame shop now fill Dorothy’s Rooms where one spectacular treasure remains. Big Dorothy Baker’s private bathroom is a 1960s showplace, done up in black plastic tiles with green fixtures. It is a rare and well-cared for survivor of a legendary place and a bygone time.

Big Dorothy's bathroom, Ghost Art Gallery

P.S. You can read the earlier history of Dorothy's Rooms in part 1.

Dorothy’s Rooms Part 1

Prohibition and World War I brought reforms, and Helena, along with two hundred other American cities, closed its old red-light district in 1917. The women re-emerged in other locations billed as “furnished rooms.” Such places never mentioned exactly what was “furnished.” Madams Ida Levy, Pearl Maxwell, and a few others ran businesses above the Boston Block and the St. Louis Block on South Last Chance Gulch.

Ida Levy. Photo courtesy Susan Bazaar.

By 1927, Ida Levy operated her “rooms” upstairs at 19 1/2 South Last Chance Gulch. Ida was handsome, big-hearted, and fond of jewelry so gaudy it didn’t look real. But the diamonds and gems she wore were not only authentic, they were the best.  Ida bought distinctive, expensive neckties for her regular customers at Helena’s best stores. Employees noted Ida’s purchases, and waited to see what prominent citizens would turn up wearing them. After Prohibition, Ida’s Silver Dollar Bar (where the Windbag Saloon and Grill is today) was a favorite watering hole. Her upstairs “furnished rooms” had regular customers too. Marks in the flooring reveal that Ida’s rooms consisted of a long row of tiny cribs, one-room offices where prostitutes conducted business. In 1943, however, federal law banned cribs and Ida remodeled her upstairs into “proper” bedrooms. In 1954, Ida retired and Dorothy Baker took over as madam. She eventually purchased the property and leased the downstairs storefronts. Customers visiting Dorothy’s Rooms entered as they had during Ida’s tenure, at the back.

Dorothy's back door, where the Ghost Art Gallery is today.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

Dorothy had no liquor license, but ushered her patrons hospitably into a small kitchen/bar where she sold drinks anyhow. Beyond the bar, a long hallway connected seven bedrooms, five sitting rooms, and Dorothy’s private apartments. Dorothy was a generous benefactor. She rewarded her paperboys with five-dollar tips and was a soft touch for youngsters peddling fundraisers. She donated hundreds of children’s books to local institutions; she wrote countless checks to charities; and she paid for several college educations. She loaned money without question, tipped off the police to drug pushers, and was polite to tipsy teenagers who knocked on her door. She sent them off with humor if they were underage. Little wonder the town was outraged when police finally closed her down in 1973.

P.S. Remember this Helena madam who operated nearly a century earlier?

Daniels County Courthouse

Scobey, the seat of Daniels County, has Montana’s most unusual courthouse. It is a stunning false-fronted building, painted a crisp white. But it has a rather shady past. The building has been enlarged and remodeled inside. What was once a spacious hotel lobby is now divided into county offices. But the courthouse began as a hotel, built sometime before 1913 when the town of Scobey relocated from its original site along the Poplar River flats. This hotel had several owners, but during most of the teens, One-eyed Molly Wakefield owned the building. Molly was a rough character who earned her nickname because she was blind in one eye. A long scar ran across it, hinting at some violent episode in her mysterious past. She came on the train from Kansas City with her four sons, all her belongings, and money in her pockets. Molly bought real estate, including the hotel. She and her sons kept pit bulls for fighting staked between her hotel and the Tallman Hotel next door. There was gambling in Molly’s hotel, as there was in Scobey’s other hotels, but women were the main attraction. The hotel had no indoor bathroom facilities, although the first-floor rooms for entertaining were handily equipped with sinks. A large sleeping room upstairs accommodated legitimate overnight guests. In 1917, federal officials closed red light districts across the nation. One-Eyed Molly disappeared, and her hotel sat empty.



Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 950-886

When Scobey became the county seat in 1920, officials had no reservations about taking over the old hotel. Even today, some of the county offices retain telltale sinks. It is Montana’s only brothel-turned-courthouse.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember this savvy madam?

Carrie Nation

In 1910, the hatchet-wielding, bar-smashing temperance crusader Carrie Nation came to Butte. At that time Butte had 275 saloons; even Mayor Charles Nevin owned a bar. Booze joints in nearby Anaconda sported signs that read, “All Nations welcome except Carrie,” while reformers welcomed her with open arms. Onlookers cheered as the stout sixty-three-year-old Mrs. Nation, with a flourish and a crowd in tow, charged down the length of Butte’s notorious Pleasant Alley.

Carrie Nation flourishes her hatchet in this 1909 photo.
Kansas State Historical Society, B Nation, Carrie *48

She had some difficulty communicating with the resident prostitutes because few of them spoke English. At the end of the alley back on Mercury Street, she burst into the Irish World, a well-known parlor house, and met her match in madam May Maloy. The two got into a scuffle, and Maloy booted Mrs. Nation out the door with a well-placed kick. She emerged with her bonnet askew, suffering from a wrenched elbow. It was a moment Maloy’s patrons savored, and they celebrated with drinks all around. Thus Carrie Nation made not so much as a single convert in Butte. In fact, Butte likes to claim that Maloy’s was the last saloon Carrie Nation ever set foot in. While that’s not exactly true, it may have marked a turning point in her career.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Mary Gleim

Every western town had its houses of ill repute. In Montana, a few significant remnants of these colorful businesses survive. There’s the Dumas in Butte, Big Dorothy’s in Helena, and two of Mary Gleim’s West Front Street brothels in Missoula. Gleim was a flamboyant character who operated eight “female boarding houses” in Missoula’s red light district where railroad men patronized its honky tonks and saloons. Gleim’s splashy career included conviction in 1894 for the attempted murder of a rival. Her prison record notes that she arrived at Deer Lodge to serve her sentence dressed to the nines in a “complete outfit.” During her prison term, another female prisoner viciously stabbed her, and Gleim never quite recovered from the attack. Reputedly a smuggler of laces, diamonds, opium, and Chinese railroad workers, the mountainous madam weighed three hundred pounds. She was a formidable opponent and a match for any man. “Mother Gleim,” as she was also known, operated brothels until her death in 1914. She left an estate of one hundred thousand dollars. Her former brothels, both nicely renovated and adaptively reused as businesses, add to the interesting history of the 200 block of West Front Street. According to her wishes, Gleim’s tombstone—unlike all the others in the Missoula city cemetery—faces the railroad tracks. This way, Gleim could bid farewell to the many railroad men who were her customers.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go
P.S. Remember this flamboyant madam?

Chicago Joe

What are you up to this week, history buffs? Tomorrow I'll be presenting a fun and informative program: “Helena on the Light Side,” a humorous view of the city's past including Helena’s love affair with the hangman’s tree, its bawdy ladies, and its earthquake-resilient citizens. Details in Friday's Independent Record here or call Patti Shearer 202-1766.

And speaking of Helena's past...
Josephine “Chicago Joe” Hensley was one of Helena’s several well-known madams. Her infamous Coliseum Theater in the 1880s and early 1890s carried a payroll of one thousand dollars a week. Hensley earned her nickname because of the attractive girls she imported from Chicago to work for her. At the height of her success, Hensley owned more than $200,000 worth of real estate, helped many financially, contributed to local causes, and anonymously educated two younger sisters, two nieces, a nephew, and a half brother.

From No Step Backward by Paula Petrik. Original in the Montana Historical Society collection.

In later years she cut quite a figure presiding over her cash register wearing an enormous Elizabethan collar and a dark, flowing velvet robe of purple or green, her ample waist encircled by a jewel-studded golden sash. Jewels sparkled everywhere on her person that one could be pinned. Hensley died of cirrhosis of the liver following surgery in 1899. E. W. Toole, brother of the governor, rode behind her coffin in an open carriage, an unheard-of gesture. Hensley’s generosity was admirable, and so was her intelligence. She accomplished what few others could, especially when you consider her handicap: she could neither read nor write. Hensley’s remains lie in an unmarked grave beneath modern-day Robinson Park where the Catholic cemetery used to be.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go