Butte's House of Mystery

The Montana Standard of September 2, 1936, reported on the demolition of a mysterious building on the corner of Galena and Wyoming in the heart of Butte’s historic red light district.

 1916  Sanborn-Perris map of Butte shows the House of Mystery on the corner of Galena and Wyoming. Note the label “Female Boarding” on neighboring buildings denoting prostitution.

The long-abandoned building had been slated for demolition before, but the owner had always managed to avoid it. This, time, however, the public eyesore was coming down. As WPA workers began to gut the interior, they discovered the secrets it had long disguised. From the street it appeared to be a two story structure with street entrances to a dozen cribs—tiny offices where the women of the neighborhood had once plied their trade. In one of the crib windows, a display of women’s underwear lay in a pile, its fabric rotting and threadbare. But deeper within the building, workers discovered a three-story maze of hallways that criss-crossed each other, hidden passageways, false floors, tiny closets, and trick wiring. Electrical wires passed through the closets in such a way that the lights could be stealthily switched off from inside. Why would someone need to suddenly and clandestinely throw the building into darkness? When workmen pulled up the flooring with their crowbars, they exposed another dark secret in the basement: a buried room dug out of the bedrock with three filthy beds where someone, at some point in time, had obviously hidden. On one of these beds lay a faded photograph, taken by an Oakland, California, photographer, of two young Chinese boys, one dressed in a traditional embroidered tunic and trousers, the other boy in early nineteenth century American dress. Tunnels from this dugout room ran beneath Wyoming and Galena streets, but bedrock stopped both midway. Today a parking lot sits on this corner, and while the house is long gone, its mystery lingers in the tall tales of Butte.

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?

B Street Brothels, Livingston

Every Montana town had its red light district, and remnants of these places survive in many communities. Buildings and houses have usually been adapted for other uses and their histories forgotten. One exception is the railroad town of Livingston’s quaint little B Street Historic District, once a thriving neighborhood that catered to railroaders. At one time there were nine houses. Five of them on the street’s east side survive. Built between 1896 and 1904, these unusual little cottages feature gables and porches that resemble those of larger homes. Identical in composition, they have front porches with thin columns and small attic windows. Each had two separate front doors, a brick chimney on each half, and three small rooms, called “cribs,” on each side.

There was also a small waiting area just inside each front door. Mid-range brothels like these often housed cribs enclosed within the house and were built without kitchens and bathrooms. These types of establishments were meant to look like real homes, but they had no conveniences. They gave patrons—in Livingston, mostly traveling railroad men—the impression of a “home away from home,” but in reality offered few creature comforts. Livingston’s B Street Historic District operated until it closed in 1948. Four of the cottages, resembling tiny wooden temples, retain good architectural integrity. Homeowners in one of the houses removed the partitions and added a loft. Wanting others to appreciate their home’s interesting history, they also preserved a patch in the floor, added during the historic period, to cover a hole worn by an iron bedstead.

P.S. Remember this brothel-turned-courthouse?

Wassweiler Hot Springs

Montana has a number of hot springs that gained popularity for recreational and therapeutic use during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ferdinand and Caroline Wassweiler operated one of the first near Ten Mile Creek just west of Helena. Their first hotel and bathhouse opened in 1865. The soothing mineral water offered local miners a relaxing day off from the dusty diggings in Last Chance Gulch.


Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, 951-609

In 1869, the Wassweilers gained title to the land and two hot water springs. But short of funds in 1874, they sold their hotel and water rights to Colonel Charles Broadwater. Broadwater then ran the Wassweilers’ hotel until 1889 when his grand Broadwater Hotel and Natatorium opened on the property a short distance away. All traces of his first hotel have since vanished, but Wassweiler kept eighty acres and built a second hotel on that same site in 1883. The little complex survives out on U.S. Highway 12 west of town. The hotel features seven exterior doors accessing the separate guest rooms. A stone building a few steps behind served as the bathhouse. Wooden tubs outfitted each of its four individual compartments. Local legend has it that when the famed Broadwater Hotel opened, the Wassweilers lost business. So Wassweiler converted his bathhouse to cribs and imported ladies to entertain miners. The Wassweilers’ hotel and bathhouse, in its second life, operated until 1904. These are the only hot springs hotel structures left in the Helena area.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

A Mild Thanksgiving in Wild Miles City, 1882

Miles City was a wild town in its day. Wooden false fronts, wide dusty streets, and saloons where whiskey flowed made the town on every cowboy’s route and a place where a good time was easily found. Cowboys and soldiers at Fort Keogh frequented the numerous houses where the ladies entertained them lavishly, for a fee, of course.

Miles City prostitutes and patrons in a parlor house reception hall.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives, Morrison Collection

But for one day in the 1880s, an unusual atmosphere pervaded the air. The Miles City Daily Press noted after Thanksgiving Day in 1882 that seldom had there been such a mild holiday. The weather that day was clear and brilliant and the temperature balmy, precisely the kind of day one would choose for a holiday. And so Miles City gave itself up to relaxation and enjoyment. The bank and the post office were closed although citizens received their daily mail. Stores were open early for shoppers planning holiday meals, and by noon, all stores had hung their closed signs in their windows. Visitors flocked into town from neighboring settlements and reaches to see what fun might be going on. But, said the paper, there was only the mildest type to be found. There was never a more sober and orderly day witnessed in Miles City. The saloons were all open and they were well patronized and did a brisk business, but the patrons were all unusually well behaved.  Unlike the usual barroom scuffles and rowdy behavior, the spirit of good behavior seemed to hover over all. Miles City was in it glory that Thanksgiving night in 1882, and it was gratifying to record that not a single disturbance occurred to mar the general harmony that had prevailed throughout that pastoral Thanksgiving Day.

May yours be as pleasant.

Elinor Knott

For me, October means telling ghost stories by the dozen, which is what I'll be doing tomorrow night. Join me here at the Historical Society at 6:30 Thursday evening for "How We Miss Them." In the mean time, here's another ghost story to tide you over until then.

Elinor Knott was one of the many madams at the Dumas Hotel in Butte. On a winter night in 1955, Knott packed her suitcase, put on her hat, and sat down to wait. Her lover had promised to leave his wife and come for her. They would leave Butte to start a new life together. But the next morning a friend discovered Knott’s body in her rooms at the Dumas. The coroner pronounced her dead of natural causes. Dark whispers among acquaintances suggested that something was amiss. Although officials declared her destitute, friends knew Knott owned jewelry, a red Cadillac, and a Harley Davidson motorcycle. These never surfaced and there was no inquest into her death. The coroner pronounced it suicide by a lethal combination of alcohol and drugs. A few years ago, a woman who had worked at the Dumas in the 1970s returned to Butte on a visit. She told of a curious experience. She said she was staying alone at the Dumas one night. She was in the bathroom upstairs at the end of the hall, with the door open. She had a clear view of the hall and the corner stairway. She saw a woman wearing a hat and carrying a suitcase walk past the bathroom door and descend the stairs. She was so shocked she didn’t move until the top of the woman’s head disappeared. She hurried down the stairs after her, but there was no sign of the woman. The front and back doors were locked and barred shut. Some time later, an artist commissioned to paint a mural for the city of Butte rented Knott’s former apartment to use a studio. Something compelled her to paint portrait after portrait of a woman she had never seen. She couldn’t seem to paint anything else.


Courtesy F.O.G (Friends of Ghosts)

 One of the canvasses, rescued from the trash, shows a middle-aged woman with a coy smile and a quaint little hat.

From Montana Moments: History on the Go

Caroline McGill

Dr. Caroline McGill came to Butte in 1911 to work at the Murray Hospital, returned to Johns Hopkins to complete her medical degree, and turned down an offer to stay at Johns Hopkins to return to Butte in 1914. She practiced there until she retired in 1956. Dr. McGill was a highly skilled physician, but she was also a friend to her patients through Butte’s ugly labor management strife, fires, explosions, and accidents that were common in the mining town. She made house calls to the crudest of miner’s shacks where she ministered to families under primitive conditions. She once said, “I made up my mind that I would never offend one of these good women by seeming to notice that their standards of sanitation were not mine. I couldn’t abide the habit of some of my colleagues of dusting off a chair with a clean handkerchief before daring to sit on it.” Dr. McGill was a familiar figure in saloons where stabbings, gunshot wounds, fractures, and concussions tested her skills. She frequently visited the women of Butte’s sprawling red light district, calling equally at low-rent cribs and high-class parlor houses. Small, attractive, and full of energy, Dr. McGill was a cut above the rest.

Dr. Caroline McGill relaxes on the front porch of a guest cabin of her 360 320 guest ranch in Gallatin Canyon.
Montana Historical Society Photograph Archives

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?

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