Lee Mantle Mansion
This splendid, highly visible Victorian-era residence was home to English immigrant Lee Mantle. Mantle arrived in Butte in 1877, helped organize city government, and established the Daily Inter Mountain newspaper in 1881. He then entered politics. He served as a territorial legislator in 1882, mayor of Butte in 1892, and as a U.S. Senator from 1895 to 1899. Local architect Henry M. Patterson built Mantle’s uptown commercial block and extensively remodeled this 1880s wood-frame home circa 1890. Patterson, whose imaginative designs color many of Butte’s streetscapes, creatively adapted then-popular architectural forms. The striking brick-veneered home features a projecting bay with French doors, a rounded bay with curved glass windows, and a two-story porch supported by elegant Tuscan columns. Its location on a main thoroughfare across from the county courthouse made it the perfect place for prominent political events. On September 27, 1909, and again on October 19, 1911, U.S. President William H. Taft addressed thousands of bystanders from a stage built in front of the Mantle home. From 1931 until 2010, the building served as a mortuary.
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