Vernacular Architecture Forum

Mining Metropolis: An Island in a Stockman's Paradise
Under Montana's Big Sky
June 10-13, 2009

  Today is
 
 
Cornice of Dumas Brothel

Schedule

42-page Conference Schedule Booklet (1.6 meg PDF) with complete schedule details. Hard copies will be provided at the conference.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The Silver Bow Club (left front) is down the block from the old county jail, O'Rourke Apartments, and Original Mine headframe in the distance up Alaska Street.
VAF Board Meeting — Historic Finlen Hotel

Opening Reception - Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres — Silver Bow Club (built 1906 as the Millionaires' Club at a cost of $100,000. Functioning 1906 Otis elevator in place). 5:00-6:30 pm

Keynote Address — Long-time contributor to Harper's Magazine Edwin Dobb will introduce us to Butte and southwest Montana. Mr. Dobb wrote "Pennies From Hell: In Montana, the Bill for America's Copper Comes Due" (Harper's, October 1996). And he recently co-wrote "Butte, America", a PBS documentary to air in Fall 2009. (Bio) The presentation will be held in the Art Deco Mother Lode Theatre. Transportation will be provided to and from the War Bonnet Inn and Montana Tech dorm rooms. Attendees staying at the Finlen are within walking distance of both the Silver Bow Club and the Mother Lode Theatre. 7:00-8:30 pm

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Juxtapositions: The Original Mine headframe looms behind this 1916 shotgun duplex—one of the properties open on Butte Day.
Butte Day! - Butte will welcome your explorations of architecture ranging from the truly vernacular in the remnant of an 1890s shanty town, (home to immigrants, bootleggers, widows, and downtrodden minorities) to the second skyscraper west of Minneapolis and St. Louis, just a few blocks away. Juxtaposition is the theme in Butte - a tiny miner's cottage may share a block with a huge residential hotel, a porch-fronted four-plex, middle class single family homes, and an elegant mansion. Former brothels are adjacent to Butte's version of Chinatown. And all are within sight of the mines. Fourteen surviving headframes, some 120 feet tall, dot the hills just dozens of feet from residences and the main Uptown commercial district.

Approximately 40 properties will be open to VAFers. Butte is a particularly pleasant city to walk, because it has relatively small blocks, and very little traffic. However, vans will loop around the area to help participants see as much as possible.

Evening Progressive Reception - Hors d'oeuvres at the historic Hirbour Barber Shop, Butte City Jail, and Rookwood Speakeasy. This will be an opportunity to enjoy several of the highly visited properties in Uptown Butte. Transportation to and from the hotels and dorm rooms will be provided. 5 pm - 7 pm.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Southeast Tour - Option 1

Barely surving: A residence in Pony, Montana.
This tour will explore themes of early, remote mining camps, ghost town, county fairgrounds, and one of Montana's few round barns. Virginia City was the second Territorial Capital of Montana and is now a well visited National Historic Landmark with nearly all its original buildings and landscapes. It is a living town of 150 year-round residents who host the West's best preserved gold mining town from the 1860s. Both Virginia City and Pony have preserved much of their original fabric, with an overlay of modern ranching and tourism. Nearby Nevada City contains fourteen original buildings and nearly 100 relocated buildings. It is an early 1950s example of preservation-collected buildings from across the state that would otherwise have been lost.

Ranching themes range from the unique three-level circular barn near Twin Bridges to modern vernacular grain silos modified to serve as residences-one with a matching mini-silo doghouse! Historic Twin Bridges, where Lewis and Clark had more choices to make as they ascended the Jefferson River, will welcome you to dinner at the Madison County Fair Grounds and a National Register-listed polygonal arena, about a block from the Blue Anchor, a classic Montana saloon.

Northwest Tour - Option 2

Granite Ghost Town, near Philipsburg. The last inhabited cabin (abandoned ca. 1969) will be visited, weather permitting.
The Northwest Tour promises a rich immersion into the vernacular architecture of southwest Montana as well. From Anaconda, the 19th-century copper-smelting center, to the quintessential Montana gold mining towns of Phillipsburg and Granite, to the sprawling ranchlands surrounding Deer Lodge, tour participants will have the opportunity to view a palimpsest of vernacular forms and styles carved into the rugged Montana landscape. The representative variety of properties on this tour dating from the late 19th through mid 20th century, including housing from every social stratum, mining and ranching structures, theaters, and the mainstays of any hard-living western town-churches and bars, ensures VAFers will find buildings that meet their particular interests.

No excursion into Montana's historic towns would be complete without sampling the hardy local cuisine. This tour will include a traditional pasty box lunch reminiscent of those consumed by smeltermen in Anaconda and a barbeque dinner at the famed Grant-Kohrs Ranch under the Big Sky - all served up with legendary Montana hospitality.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Paper Sessions - Approximately 36 papers will be delivered at Montana Tech. Abstracts are included in the 42-page Conference Schedule Booklet. (1.6 meg PDF) Hard copies will be provided at the conference.

Banquet - The conference will conclude with a banquet at the Front Street Station, the lovely, recently restored Northern Pacific Depot (left). There we will host the annual VAF meeting, awards, invitation to next year's conference in Washington, DC, and live music.

 

Sunday, 14 June 2009

Post-conference tour to the Helena area, sponsored by Society for Industrial Archaeology. Separate registration required - click here for full information.
Keynote speaker Edwin Dobb: Butte native Edwin Dobb is a fourth generation descendant of Cornish tin miners and Irish copper miners. A former senior editor and acting editor in chief of The Sciences, Dobb writes for numerous national publications, including National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine, but his primary relationship is with Harper's Magazine, where he's been a contributor since 1995. Dobb is the co-author, with Jack Horner, of Dinosaur Lives, which The New York Times selected as a notable book of the year and The Los Angeles Times picked as a best book of the year. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing Series. Dobb is the co-writer and co-producer of a feature-length documentary film, called "Butte, America," produced by Rattlesnake Productions, of Bozeman, Montana. He is a frequent visiting lecturer at the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Dobb lives in East Walkerville.