Wellman Block - White Sulphur Springs, MT
Posted by: T0SHEA
N 46° 32.890 W 110° 54.053
12T E 507599 N 5154960
A landmark building in White Sulphur Springs for many years, the Wellman Block was nearly lost to the world in a 1911 fire.
Waymark Code: WMWMKK
Location: Montana, United States
Date Posted: 09/18/2017
Views: 0
Built probably in 1880, the Wellman block may be the first large commercial block to have been built in White Sulphur Springs. The original occupant of the lower floor was a leather and saddlery shop, and when the building was listed in the National Register in 1994, it still housed a saddlery shop, though an entirely different enterprise. In the intervening years the building had housed a restaurant, an antique shop and, from 1938 until 1950 (or 1954, depending on the source), the White Sulphur Springs Post Office. Its history is not well documented so there may have been other businesses here through the years, as well. The upper floor was apartments until 1891, when it was converted to offices.
Certainly no longer a saddlery, the Wellman Block now appears to be the home of Red Ants Pants, founded in 2006, the " first company dedicated to making work clothes for women".
It was in 1911 that William Wellman, who had purchased the building in 1904, renovated the building, adding the present pressed metal cornice and the decorative parapet. From that time on the building was known as the Wellman Block, as that's what it read on the parapet.
WELLMAN BLOCK
The local hot springs had been a business enterprise for almost a decade when in 1880 brothers William H. and Robert N. Sutherlin moved their newspaper, the Rocky Mountain Husbandman, from the waning gold camp at Diamond City to the promising town of White Sulphur Springs. The brothers purchased property from Dr. William Parberry, built this combination business and residential block as an investment, and the commercial district quickly grew around it. Soon the town boasted daily stages to Helena, two doctors, a school, and some twenty businesses.
James MacDonald set up a harness shop and saddlery here, purchasing the building in 1884 for eight hundred dollars. After the turn of the twentieth century, harness maker William Wellman continued the leather business, buying the building in 1907. Wellman, a longtime resident who settled here in the mid 1880s, remodeled the building’s façade in 1911 after a disastrous downtown fire.
A fashionable pressed metal cornice with nameplate and spacious display windows added new vitality to the town landmark.
In 1936, Robert Gordon, son of African-American parents who settled here in the 1880s, inherited the building. Robert’s brother, noted gospel singer and author Immanuel “Taylor” Gordon, operated an antique store and managed the second-floor apartments. Between 1938 and 1954 the building also housed the local post office. Now returned to its former use as a saddlery and beautifully refurbished, the Wellman Block, with its arched windows and decorative false front, is a stylish example of small-town Western Commercial architecture.
From the NRHP plaque at the building
Artist: Unknown
Address: 206 East Main Street
White Sulphur Springs, MT United States
59645
Web URL to relevant information: [Web Link]
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