In 1891, Swiss-Italian immigrant Peter Schonsberg established his residence and grocery store in a one-story wood-frame building built in 1884. Peter, wife Pacifica, and six children lived in the western third while the store occupied the eastern two-thirds. In 1900, contractors jacked up the building and placed a full-story stone foundation under it. They also built up the stone house to the west and attached the false-front stone building on the east, where Peter opened a saloon. Peter died in 1915 at age fifty-nine and Pacifica died at age forty-two in 1916. Their married daughter Adeline Rodoni raised her five younger siblings (and her children), while husband Julius and partner Felix Tatti ran the store and saloon. Prohibition closed the saloon, but by 1920, Schonsberg’s oldest son Valerio, his wife Lizzie, and sister Linda were operating the grocery store, while the extended family lived upstairs. Valerio reopened the saloon after 1933, running it until he retired in 1971. Lizzie and daughter Valerie established The Alpine Bar in Meaderville in the mid-1940s. After Lizzie died in 1969, Valerie kept The Alpine until her death in 2010.

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Swiss-born Rocco Campana came to Butte in 1886 when it was still a mining camp with a precarious future. Rocco first opened a saloon then, confident of the town’s potential, invested his savings in property on this corner. By 1890, three brothers had joined him. Clemens, Celeste, and Constante Campana operated a grocery, hay, and grain business while Rocco handled wholesale liquors and cigars. The entire family lived on the premises. In 1894, the Campanas hired Butte architect H. M. Patterson to combine the corner storefront with a new two-story building next door. The family residence then sprawled over both second floors above the grocery and bar. A feed store and stable were on the alley. In 1898, Rocco died leaving his wife Pellegrina and nine children, the youngest twelve days old. Pellegrina raised her children here, running the bar and grocery until her death in 1925. The centered name and date may not be the only reminder of this family prominence in Butte’s commercial history. Some recently claim to have seen the ghost of Pellegrina presiding behind the bar.

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South Butte and the main business district up the hill grew toward each other as the streetcar line along Utah Street connected the two parts of the city. By the turn of the twentieth century, spaces between the two areas had disappeared and neighborhood proprietors like Thomas Manley and Charles Stevens did a brisk business. The partners’ grocery, built in 1909 for $10,000, was a longtime neighborhood fixture, which operated under the name of Stevens and Manley Grocers until circa 1945. Glazed and unpainted red brick, granite-trimmed windows, and three bands of simple corbelling reflect the straightforward architectural trends of the early twentieth century. Bricked-in doorways document subtle changes over time. Like many of its contemporaries, the building housed a second floor lodge hall. The Catholic Order of Foresters met here twice a month and in 1911, the hall temporarily served as St. Joseph’s Catholic Church after fire destroyed the church proper.

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