P a g e 3 G h o s t T o w n s a n d H i s t o r y o f M o n t a n a N e w s l e t t e r Across the street from the Catholic Church and on the corner was the Metropolitan Hotel. At the top of the road where it evens out was the Ruby Hotel. As you get to the top of the road and where the Ruby Hotel stood, try to imagine a jewelry store, a general store, the Cleary Hotel, Moore House, saloons, lodging houses, gambling and lunch rooms, stores for fruits and cigars and the vault of the Hyde Freychlag Bank. On the right are buildings that had to be built on posts. These buildings were built by several Chinese businessmen and some of the buildings were the "red light district" places. Moving toward the Miners' Union Hall, the Moore Hotel stood. It was the first three‐storied structure built on the mountain, and quickly developed into one of the Territory's finest hotels. Townspeople and travelers alike marveled at the first two floors furnished with hand‐carved black walnut with tables covered in Tennessee marble. The Miners' Union Hall was dedicated on a New Year's Eve in 1890 ‐ a building of three stories and native stone structure ‐ at a cost of $22,000. The façade was simple, but elegant with generously proportioned windows dominated the side facing the street. In the space above the first floor doors and main windows, transoms glistened with multicolored glass panes, and the morning light filtered through creating pastel checkerboards on the tops of the three emerald pool tables with their net pockets. A metal plate on the threshold of the main entrance read "Butte Iron Works." Each section of the first floor's main windows that Photo by Jolene Ewert-Hintz faced the sidewalk were separated by an elegant cast iron pilaster from Butte. On each support's face, a classical‐style lute was displayed in embossed relief. The rectangular windows on the second floor combined with the third floor's arched windows to create a scalloped design of glass across the upper half of the structure. The entire facade was capped off with a cast iron cornice, which rose to a small peak in the center of the building, creating a base for a towering flagpole, from which an American flag billowed in the mountain air. The heart of the Union Hall was on the second floor. An office and small library sat on the front portion of the building, but the more important part of the upstairs lay beyond a ticket booth that stood on the landing. The combination dance floor and auditorium space was the real draw. A specially laid maple floor, with the qualities of a spring board, stretched nearly the entire length of the structure, benches lined the walls. The orange flow from oil‐fueled chandeliers illuminated waltzing couples, who cast their soft shadows on the Northwest's finest dance floor. The company began leasing buildings lots for $2.50 and log cabins, frame houses, and business buildings soon spilled down both sides of the ridge. The first business house constructed was the Moore House.
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