James Pratt, proprietor of the Red Boot and Shoe Company, spent $30,000 on the construction of this hotel/rooming house in 1912. The shoe company occupied the ground floor space through the 1930s. Large display windows and a Tudor-arched entry, designed to entice customers and guests, enhance the ground floor. Green tile embellishes the façade and caps the unique copper-clad cornice. Inside, a wrought iron staircase with marble treads leads down to the hotel lobby. Marble wainscoting and a marble floor recall its once-elegant hospitality. The lodging house above, renamed the La Salle Hotel in 1938, had more than forty-five rooms. During Prohibition in the late 1910s and 1920s, the hotel’s thirty working-class lodgers perhaps enjoyed the hidden bar tucked beneath the sidewalk. Discovered during cleanup of the building, the clandestine establishment had all the trappings of a period speakeasy including a secret entry and two-way mirror. The room continues the architectural motif with decorative Tudor arches spanning the ceiling. Elaborate support columns sporting carved griffins, terrazzo flooring, dark hardwood wainscoting, and marble trim expose a piece of Butte’s once-spirited underground.
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