Butte Anaconda & Pacific Railway, General Offices - Anaconda, MT - NRHP Historic Districts - Contributing Buildings on Waymarking.com

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Butte Anaconda & Pacific Railway, General Offices - Anaconda, MT

in NRHP Historic Districts - Contributing Buildings

Posted by:  T0SHEA

12T E 348918 N 5110473

This BA&P building is a contributing building to the Butte--Anaconda Historic District, the largest in the land in terms of number of contributing properties, encompassing over 6,000 properties.

This 1898 brick building presently serves the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway as corporate offices. Originally it served as passenger depot and dispatchers office. Passenger service was discontinued by the BA&P in 1955, though it's not known whether this was the only station in use in Anaconda at the time as the Montana Union Railroad Station, three blocks east of this one, still stands beside the tracks of the BA&P.

Beginning operations in 1893, the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway (BA&P) began to electrify much of its system in 1912. Never a very large railway, at its peak it had 135 miles of track, 75 of which were electrified. Though it was a common carrier, hauling passengers and freight, its sole reason for being was to haul copper ore from the mines at Butte to the smelter at Anaconda. The railway was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which, incidentally, owned pretty much everything else in Anaconda, as well.

The General Offices of the BA&P Railway formerly served as the passenger depot and dispatchers office for this rail operation. Built in 1898, the two-story brick structure has rusticated granite window lintels and sills with a continuous granite belt at the top and bottom of the second-story windows. The windows also feature overhead semicircular arch transoms. Dentilled and corbelled brickwork appears along the roofline at each building façade. The east end of the building has rounded corners, while a rectangular wing extends from the west end. The BA&P was incorporated October 1, 1892, and began hauling copper ore from the mines at Butte to the smelter at Anaconda by the close of 1893. The line also provided passenger service to Anacondans from this building location from the time of its construction until April 1955. Originally steam-powered, the BA&P Railway was, by 1916, the first fully electrified railroad in the United States, and the first heavy-haul electrified railroad in the world. In the 1960s, diesel locomotives replaced all the electric models.
From the BANHLD Catalog