The Butte Carriage Works appears to have gotten its start about 1892 on South Main, moving to East Galena Street in 1899, when it built a wood framed workshop there. It was in about 1917 that the company built this much larger and more substantial brick shop on East Silver, two blocks south of their East Galena location. By that time the works had become the largest and most capable in Montana. As well as having the capability to build specially designed wagons and automobile bodies, the works were producing ornamental ironwork, fire escapes, iron fencing, and window grills.
Since, by that time they were advertising sign painting as another of their services, the advertising signs which adorn the building were likely done in house. They eventually covered a large percentage of the building with their signage, possibly dual purpose advertising, both making passersby aware of the existence of the service and exhibiting the quality of their work.
Outlasting all of the old blacksmith shops from before the turn of the century, the Butte Carriage Works remained in business until the early 1940s, at which time Guay Auto Painting and the Safeway Stores Garage moved into the Silver Street location. By that time the Butte Carriage Works had not turned out a carriage in over 30 years.
Butte Carriage Works
We have all seen the ghost signs for Butte Carriage Works. The name of the business conjures images of horse-and-buggy days in Butte.
Partners in the business changed over time, and the business itself changed as Butte grew and changed. An early version of Butte Carriage Works appears in the Polk City Directory in 1895. That business was located at 121-123 South Main, near the present location of the Pekin Noodle Parlor.
In 1899, the business moved to East Galena Street. By 1905, Butte Carriage Works had moved into a new building and, according to the Anaconda Standard, had become “the largest and most extensive carriage manufactory in Montana.”
By 1911, a similar Anaconda Standard article touted the ability of the Butte Carriage Works to build specially designed wagons and automobile bodies. According to the article, “there is no sort of thing on wheels which the factory doesn’t make.” The company also manufactured ornamental ironwork that would otherwise have been shipped in from the East or from the Pacific Coast. They made fire escapes, iron fencing, and window grills. One example of their specialty work was a large canopy that was being installed at the Empress Theatre.
In 1917, Butte Carriage Works moved into a new building on Silver Street. A 1919 newspaper article announced that Butte Carriage Works, along with other carriage and automobile works, was reopening after having been closed for three weeks because of a strike by the Blacksmiths’ Union. The strike was settled, but the article specified that “the settlement has no bearing on the metal trades strike against the mining companies, as the down-town or city section of the blacksmiths’ union, has always worked on a different basis from the ‘hill’ section.”
But the blacksmith trade was changing. In 1929, an article in the Montana Standard stated the following, “Twenty-five years ago Butte had nearly a score of blacksmith shops. Today, with a half dozen exceptions, they have gone to join the dodo and the great auk.” According to the article, “Of those old-time shops established 25 years ago only one remains, the Butte Carriage company which now is really an automobile shop. It has not turned out a carriage in 20 years….The automobile sounded the death knell for the picturesque blacksmith and horse-shoer of the earlier day.” Blacksmiths were still in the mine shops, but even that work was threatened by advances in technology.
From the Butte Archives