This is actually a Then & Then & Then & Then & Now submission, as we've managed to find four photos detailing the history of two of the three buildings which have stood here, the photos ranging in age from 1896 to 1920. All photos were taken from the Main Street-Fifth Avenue intersection, looking east southeast.
The first building on this site was the Day House, built at Reeds fort in 1883. In the summer of 1886 it was moved down to this location on Main Street and was sold to Barnes & Woodman in 1896. Not long after, the property was sold to John Vrooman, editor of the Mineral County Argus newspaper, later to become the Fergus County Argus. The house was demolished and replaced by a rough stone building to serve as home of the Fergus County Argus.
In 1912, as Vrooman retired and the newspaper was sold, the Argus Building was purchased by the State Bank of Lewistown and in 1913, according to a
Fergus County Democrat article of June 24, 1913, the bank was issued a permit by the town to remodel the building. A later article indicated that the "remodelling" was progressing nicely. Unfortunately, this was not actually the case, as the following photo indicates. The building was actually razed and the present building erected by Henry Hall Johnson & Company of Great Falls, which also designed the bank.
Beginning in the early 1920s drought and insect infestations began a reversal of the influx of homesteaders to the area, the exodus precipitating the failure of all the banks in Lewistown and many of the businesses, all of which had relied heavily on the farming community for their business. By 1924 no banks remained in business in Lewistown. In December of 1924, the town being bereft of banking institutions, the second First National Bank of Lewistown was chartered.
We have no knowledge of the building's history between 1924 and the present, beyond the fact that the Moose Lodge, #1239, took over the building sometime in the interim. The lodge appears to be alive and well; the
last newsletter posted online by the lodge was dated 1914.