A large arched stone entryway sets the Mantle/Henderson & Bielenberg Building apart from its near neighbors, giving it an unmistakable streetside presence. Behind that entryway is a recessed portico from which a pair of doors lead to a business establishment within and the central stairs to the upper floors. Built in 1890 by stockman come financier Nicholas J. Bielenberg as an investment, the building housed, at various times, the Butte Miner newspaper and Western Union Telegraph on the ground floor, the offices of various companies on the second floor, and a rooming house and recreation hall on the third floor.
A longtime resident of the building was The Creamery Café, commemorated in the prominent ghost signs on the east and west faces of the building. The café occupied part of the ground floor from 1913 until 1957, moving to this building following a devastating fire on North Main Street, its original location.
A newspaper account from 1888 notes that it was requested that Bielenberg use cast iron in the building instead of brick due to a shortage of bricks. Indeed, the ground floor facade does use cast iron to some extent, but the rest of the building, save for stone trim, is built entirely of brick.
Following is a short biography of Nicholas J. Bielenberg, Danish born immigrant who arrived in the U.S. at the age of seven.
Nick Bielenberg
Nicholas Bielenberg was born June 8, 1847, in Wewelsfleth along the Elbe River near its mouth in Holstein, then part of Denmark and today in Germany downstream from Hamburg. The family emigrated to Davenport, Iowa, when Nick was 7; he left home at age 16 to apprentice as a butcher in Chicago. Two years later, 1865, he took a steamboat up the Missouri to join his brother John and half-brother Conrad Kohrs in Montana. Nick operated butcher shops at Blackfoot City and Helena for several years, but by 1873 his focus was changing to stock growing. He continued various businesses, including the Butte Butchering Company, ultimately one of the largest meat-packing operations in the northwest and reputedly one of the first to employ large-scale cold storage.
Bielenberg lived most of his life in Deer Lodge, where the family home at 801 Milwaukee saw guests ranging from Jeanette Rankin to Gary Cooper. Nick was one of the first to bring cattle into the Deer Lodge Valley, and was one of the first members of the Montana Stockgrowers Association in 1879. He is generally credited with starting the sheep-raising industry in western Montana, eventually running some 130,000 head on ranches across the state.
Nicholas Bielenberg’s daughter,
Alma (Higgins), became prominent in Butte garden circles, but she got her start in Deer Lodge.
In Butte, the butchering company was his primary venture, together with the Mantle & Bielenberg Block as an investment in an office building. Both Lee Mantle and Nick Bielenberg were prominent Republicans; Nick left the party to follow Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, when Bielenberg was a delegate to the Chicago convention that nominated Roosevelt on the Bull Moose ticket. By most accounts, Nick Bielenberg was a close friend and confidant of Teddy Roosevelt.
Bielenberg was a partner in the Pilot Butte Mining Company, which in 1912 had a three-compartment shaft 2,400 feet deep. In that year, Pilot Butte employed 31 underground miners and 12 on the surface, resulting in an annual payroll of $60,000 (compare the Anaconda company’s annual payroll of more than $14,000,000 the same year).
Nick Bielenberg died in Deer Lodge on July 6, 1927.
From the Butte History Blogspot
MANTLE/HENDERSON & BIELENBERG BUILDING
A graceful semicircular arched entry of rough quarried stone is a striking feature of this three-story commercial/residential building that once housed the publisher of the Butte Miner. Built circa 1890 by pioneer stockman/financier N. J. Bielenberg, the first floor was remodeled in 1891 to accommodate the publishing company. By 1900, Western Union Telegraph occupied the first floor, offices were on the second floor, and the third floor contained a lodging house and a recreation hall. A sign on the building’s east side advertises the Creamery Café, a longtime favorite eatery and later tenant. Exceptional interior finishings include a beautiful tin ceiling, an open stairwell with a skylight above, maple floors, and varnished pine woodwork. The grand cast iron, brick, and stone façade with its repetitive arch motif is today a substantial reminder of Butte’s Victorian-era prosperity.
From the NRHP plaque at the building