22 West Lamme

A two-story wooden residence stood at the rear of this lot by the alley in 1889, and a year later owners built this remarkably well-preserved brick house on Lamme. Its inviting front porch, tall chimney, decorative brackets beneath the eaves, and distinctive Mansard roof identify it as Second Empire, a style particularly associated with France during the reign of Napoleon III and with Parisian sophistication, and one that became the choice for large public buildings and grand mansions in post-Civil War America. The nearly perpendicular Mansard roof also turned cramped attics into usable space without adding a full second story. This modest residence, likely built as an investment property during the short-lived building boom tied to Bozeman’s unsuccessful quest to become the state capital, is the city’s last remaining example of the once-popular style. In 1900 German-born butcher Louis Gries lived here with his wife Bertha and their three children. By 1904 an expanded rear addition had replaced the home’s original one-story back room, which undoubtedly served as a kitchen; many two-story nineteenth-century residences placed the kitchen under a separate roof to reduce fire risk because bucket brigades could more easily reach a one-story roof and perhaps save the rest of the house. In 1920 bookkeeper Walter Davis and his wife Virginia lived here with their two children, Virginia’s widowed mother, and her thirty-year-old brother.

Bozeman, Montana · United States