Music Hall, Theatre, Saloon, and Rooming House, through the years this has seemingly done it all, today including gambling house, being the present home of Gamer’s Cafe & Casino. Quite Queen Anne in its styling, it is one of the half dozen or so of Butte's surviving buildings which sports a corner tower, or turret. With keyhole windows, a pair of oriel dormers jutting from its Second Empire roof, a prominent gabled centre portico with little hipped roof towers on each of its sides, Roman arched windows mixed in with the rectangular ones, and stone lintels, modillions and dentils, this is a really "busy" building. Lots of eye candy here.
The hall was built in 1892 by John H. Curtis, an immigrant from County Cork, Ireland. Curtis came to America with his family in 1843 as a child of 5, settling in Missouri. In 1866 he travelled to Helena, soon becoming a successful grocer. Not long after moving to Butte on August 20, 1880, he became a phenomenally successful real estate investor, soon owning property not only in Butte, but also in Lewis and Clark, Jefferson, and Madison Counties. We assume that, being of Irish stock, Curtis felt right at home in Butte as it had then, and still has today, one of the largest concentrations of Irish immigrants and descendants in the country.
One of the many and varied types of events held at the hall over the years was the benefit; whether staged in support of an individual or a cause, the hall was home to them all. The following is a case in point.
FOR BEAGER'S BENEFIT
The Street Car Employees Will Help Their Injured Comrade.
BUTTE. March 29—The employees of the street railway, in conjunction with the management, have arranged for a grand electric ball, which will be given at Curtis Music Hall on April 10 for the benefit of J. Beager, the conductor who was shot by Martin Stephens. The price of the tickets has been placed at $1 and two street car tickets good for all lines are attached to each ticket. All of the cars will run until after the ball. Van Orton's orchestra will furnish the music for the occasion. Beager's expenses have already been considerably more than $1000, and it is hoped to make up a great part of this amount from the sale of the tickets, which is already very large, as it deserves to be.
From the Anaconda Standard