The Thornton was one of many buildings in Butte designed by H. M. Patterson, at the time Butte's most influential and prolific architect. Given the rate at which Butte was growing at that time, we imagine that Patterson was one busy fellow. The date stone at the building's cornice indicates it to have been built, or at least begun, in 1890.
Though not a particularly striking building, its Richardsonian Romanesque features include the mixture of brick and rusticated stone, both Roman and flattened arches over its upper floor windows and stone panels in each of the three bays at the cornice, the outer two decorated with floral motifs, the centre one containing a banner with the date of construction in its centre.
Apparently the name of the hotel,
Thornton, came about in honor of a Civil War veteran, Confederate "Colonel" J. C. C. Thornton (John Caldwell Calhoun "Coon" Thornton [1834 - 1887]), who died in 1887, three years prior to the construction of his namesake hotel. Calhoun was one of scores of Confederate recruiters sent behind Federal lines in Missouri in the winter of 1863-1864 to round up and sign up as many southern men as they could. Calhoun, apparently, was one of the more successful of them, returning with quite a number of new recruits. Thornton was a veteran of the First Battle of Fredericksburg, Carthage, Lexington, Wilson's Creek, Camden Point and Pea Ridge, if not others. After the war in 1865 he went to Deer Lodge, Montana, and in 1876 moved to Butte, Montana where he was active in mining interests. He died in Butte on September 15, 1887. A native of Clay County, Missouri, he was called “Colonel” during the war.
The hotel, at
53 East Broadway, was built as more of a rooming house than a hotel, with commercial space on the ground floor. One of the lessee of that commercial space was the Cooperative Realty Company, which placed the following ad, in an attempt to market a block of stock on a mining claim. At the time advertisements such as this were a
dime a dozen in Butte newspapers. This one was placed on Page 15 of the May 10, 1917 issue of the
Butte Daily Post
