German immigrant Anton Becker bought this lot on May 30, 1907, the day Hardin town lots went on sale, and soon built a two-story brick building with Hardin’s first cement sidewalk in front. He, his wife Katie, and their six children lived upstairs, while Becker’s Montana Saloon occupied the ground floor. In 1917, the Beckers hired Billings architect Curtis Oehme to transform the saloon into a hotel by adding a third story and extending the building to the alley. Oehme emphasized the hotel’s canted entrance with a square tower decorated with pressed metal, a metal roof, and an ornamental flagpole. The Hardin Tribune reported that the sixty-thousand-dollar hotel contained large lobbies on each of its three floors, along with a barroom, dining room, kitchen, parlor, and thirty-eight furnished rooms, some en suite with private baths. Ghost signs on the west and north walls still advertise rooms for one dollar up and one dollar fifty cents up. Although Anton Becker died in 1920, the hotel remained in the Becker family until 1954.