P a g e 4 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 To the people of Butte and the surrounding communities: thank you. Thank you for your loyalty, your stories, your laughter, and your support through the decades. You made Pekin Noodle Parlor what it was, and we will forever be grateful to have been part of your lives. While this is a sad day for us, we take comfort in the memories shared within these walls and the legacy that will always remain in this community. The story will continue but in a different path. With heartfelt appreciation, Pekin Noodle Parlor” Let’s Take a Look Back at Some History… The Pekin Noodle Parlor: Not a Brothel! Butte’s Chinese community settled on the block bordered by West Mercury, South Main, West Galena, and Colorado streets in the late nineteenth century. Dwellings, club rooms, laundries, restaurants, and stores selling Chinese goods crowded its thoroughfares and alleyways. Butte attorney F. T. McBride built the Pekin Noodle Parlor building at 117 South Main on speculation in 1909. Hum Yow moved his Mercury Street noodle parlor to the second floor of the new building and soon owned the property. For more than a century, the curtained booths in the Pekin Noodle Parlor provided private dining and nothing more. Upstairs noodle parlors were common in urban Chinese communities, and the Pekin’s central stair and neon sign has long beckoned both Asian and Euro-American customers. Close proximity to Butte’s once-teeming red light district has long fueled local legends about the Pekin. Online reviews of the restaurant unfortunately label it a former brothel because of its seventeen curtained booths. However, these booths were a fixture in Asian restaurants across the West and simply offered diners privacy. Hum Yow’s Chinese Goods and Silks and G. P. Meinhart’s sign painting business originally occupied the two storefronts. A gambling casino operated in the basement from the 1910s to the 1950s. It was a business and family home and never housed prostitution.
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