Pandemic Photo Road Trips

PANDEMIC PHOTO ROAD TRIPS

This issue, Bill Tulley takes us to beautiful western Montana, specifically Philipsburg, in this installment of Pandemic Photo Road Trips. 

Thanks for the tour, Bill!

PHILIPSBURG, MT

The town was named after the famous mining engineer Philip Deidesheimer, who designed and supervised the construction of the ore smelter around which the town originally formed.

In the 1880s and 1890s, masonry structures gradually replaced the frame buildings left from Philipsburg’s mining camp days. Doe and Hoyer constructed this commercial brick building in 1887. Modini’s Grand Hotel and Restaurant was located in the west half. M. E. Doe and his sons owned and managed the drug store on the east half of the ground floor until 1969. Doe’s Drug Store even sold the town’s first gasoline, hand pumped from barrels out front.

A second-story walkway originally connected this three-story masonry building with the Kaiser House, affording the busy establishment more boarding rooms. Constructed circa 1890, its gabled dormers in a metal mansard roof present an appearance unusual to the architecture of Philipsburg. George A. Stephens purchased the hotel in 1908, and thereafter it was known as the Stephens Hotel.

The Kaiser House was constructed by Michael Kaiser. Construction started in 1878 and was completed in 1881. The original use was a very famous and fine restaurant on the main floor and a hotel on the second floor. The basement was used as a billiard and card playing area. 

In the 1920s a Golden Rule store sold dry goods and hardware in this building now occupied by the Sweet Palace, a candy store.

First known as the Hyde Block, this building was constructed by banker Joseph Hyde and his wife, Mary, in 1888. It housed the First National Bank until the silver crash of 1893. 

Established in 1891, the Philipsburg Theatre is currently the oldest operating theater in the state of Montana. Over the years, the Philipsburg Theatre has changed hands and a variety of businesses have occupied parts of the building, including a soda pop bottling company, The Philipsburg Commercial Club, a bank, and Carmichael's Livery Stable.