Tag Archives: Montana

A New Deal Marvel: Pondera County Courthouse, Conrad

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The Pondera County Courthouse is a Public Works Administration project of 1938.  Located in Conrad, which served as the seat of government for the recently created (1919) Pondera County, the courthouse stands across the street from the National Register-listed City Hall, a building which for the county’s first generation served as a catch-all public building for this agricultural community.  Neither the city hall nor the courthouse lie at the center of town–the railroad tracks and passenger depot were the focal point of the original town plan.  Both public buildings are about a block away from the town”s primary commercial crossroads.

 

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Conrad City Hall, 1919, listed in National Register of Historic Places

Architect Angus V. McIver of Great Falls designed the courthouse in the PWA Modern style found in New Deal projects across the country.  McIver, born 1892, attended public schools in Great Falls and then took a combination degree in architecture and engineering at the University of Michigan. McIver had started his practice in 1915 as part of the firm McIver & Cohagen.  He served in the military during World War I and then returned to Montana and took his architectural license in 1918. When McIver took on the Pondera County Courthouse project, he already had experience with federal projects, having been one of the principals with the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse at Billings.  After the Conrad project, he took on a public housing project in Great Falls.  McIver also designed the historic library building for the University of Montana and the Glacier County Courthouse, another New Deal project, in Cut Bank.

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During World War II, McIver was a principal architect for the East Air Field (now Malmstrom AFB) in Great Falls and the much more controversial Heart Mountain Relocation Center (a Japanese internment camp) near Cody, Wyoming.  

A dedication plaque in the entry hall notes the county commissioners for the project: Walter M. Brophy, chairman; Walter Banka; W. C. Collins; and the clerk of the board, Adolph L. Rachac.  Contractors were Lease & Leigland, J. H. Hubbard, and the Palmquist Electric Company.  The plaque also proclaims that the courthouse was “dedicated to the citizenship of Pondera County for the purpose of keeping the records, enforcing the law and upholding justice.” Many New Deal era buildings have lost their dedication plaques over the decades; this one expresses the hope and determination of a community that had been bombarded with difficulties during the Great Depression.  A county history from 1968 noted: “the anxious days of the thirties affected Conrad as they did all other parts of Montana and the nation.  Not too much progress was made.  Banks and many businesses closed, jobs were scarce and so was money” [Pondera History Association, Pondera (Great Falls, 1968), 53].

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The courthouse in Conrad is one of McIver’s most intact architectural achievements.  The blending of Art Deco styling within a general classical composition characterized PWA Modern style, and the Pondera County Courthouse is excellent, intact representation of this 1930s architectural movement.  Key architectural details include the use of streamlined metal stair-rails throughout the building; the sleek stone wainscoting in the public areas, even the Art Deco-influenced water fountains.

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The courtroom is a major achievement, with its Art Deco-styled bench, jury box, and the movie theater-like seats for the public.  Many New Deal courthouses survive but often the interiors have been renovated to either remove or obscure the original craftsmanship of the 1930s.  Not so with Pondera County Courthouse; it is an exceptional public property in northern Montana.

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Soo Line Towns in Sheridan and Daniels counties

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Twenty-six years ago, I wrote a brief essay titled, “The Soo Line Corridor of Northeastern Montana,” for Montana: The Magazine of Western History. I wanted to share images of resources and places that few Montanans knew about, much less ever visited. But it was an interesting corridor–an extension of the Canadian-based Soo Line into this corner of the state in the early 1910s. The railroad left behind small agricultural communities, punctuated by the company’s distinctive standardized combination-plan depots and grain elevators lining the tracks. What I found in the mid-1980s were compelling buildings that spoke of community pride, and boosterism. Those who created these spaces in the years before World War I thought they were establishing remote outposts with promise. But then came the crushing agricultural depression and resulting homesteading bust of the 1920s, compounded by the Great Depression of the 1930s. The communities hung on, barely, until the 1970s when towns like Dooley and Comertown became ghost towns. Whitetail and Outlook remained vital in the mid-1980s. But as I traveled into the region last month, I wondered what was left.

Dooley and Comertown are almost to the point that the next generation may mean they are little but archaeological sites. Good National Register work took place in these towns in the early 1990s–20 years ago–so they have been recorded, which is good, considering the conditions today.

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The rock with the metal plaque serving as a tombstone for Comertown is appropriate.

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The story is even bleaker in the next town down the line, at Dooley. There the National Register-listed community church is in dire need of a new roof and preservation repair or it probably will not survive another 20 years.

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In 2005, the community had tried to permanently mark the landscape with their story by means of a huge boulder on which was etched the name and included depictions of landmarks now gone. But in less than ten years, the harsh environment of the northern plains had almost swept those images off of the boulder.

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Outlook, I hoped, would be a different story. But it has lost its National Register-listed Soo Line depot–it had its original pain scheme, outbuildings, and was in good condition when I was last there in 1988. Now only the corridor remains.

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The town’s cemetery tells the story of how many were once there, and a post office, a bar, and other scattered businesses remained. Not a ghost town, but like many northern plains towns, the decline from past prominence is startling.Image.

What about Whitetail–it is the first town after crossing the Canadian border on Montana Road 511 on the way to Flaxville in Daniels County.

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But the federal and Canadian decision to close the border crossing earlier this year landed a blow against what remained in the town. The c. 1913 community school, a true plains landmark when I first saw it in 1984, may not last another generation.

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There is a community church and a post office, but one wonders for how much longer.

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As this final view of the corridor in Whitetail shows, outside of the grain elevators and tracks, there may be little to remind anyone of this time and story in Montana history.

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Erasing the Great Northern Image across the Hi-Line

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Erasing the Great Northern Image across the Hi-Line

One of the most surprising–for me, even shocking–patterns in the 21st century Hi-Line landscape is how many railroad depots have disappeared from the small towns. Certainly major towns that provide access to the Amtrak passenger service (Havre, Malta, Glasgow, Shelby) still retain their historic buildings. But most others are gone. Certainly the corridor itself remains and the grain elevators still dominate the scene, reminding everyone of the power of agribusiness today, but the stations that told you here is a Great Northern town are not there. The photo is from Rudyard in Hill County where residents took the station, moved it blocks away to the edge of the village, and use it now as a centerpiece for a community museum. In Kevin, Toole County, the depot was moved off the tracks (only slightly, it is still within view of the corridor) and made a Senior center. These places are now rare reminders of the Great Northern’s imprint on the landscape through the means of their standardized design, painted white, passenger stations.