Granite Street

From ENHLDWiki

West of Montana, Granite Street is an important residential avenue; to the east important government and business offices line the street. Granite is one of the last mostly intact streetscapes in the city, with only a few holes where buildings have been lost. 301 W. Granite, shown here, is an important element of the streetscape.

Butte's trolley system included Granite from Excelsior to Main Street, where it connected to the line accessing the Anaconda Road and many of the mines.

Although the street west of Montana is now almost entirely residential, it formerly included numerous small businesses such as the Crystal Street Market at the corner of Crystal, and Thrifty Mart at the corner of Alabama (another neighborhood grocery and barber shop, owned by Wally Schreiner). A drug store, also reported to have been at the corner of Alabama and Granite, may have figured in the film version of Butte author Myron Brinig's 1937 novel The Sisters, made into a movie in 1938 starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn. Whether the store on Granite Street is actually in the movie requires additional research, but Brinig did live at 814 W. Granite.

Architecturally, Granite Street affords an excellent spectrum of residential styles, including simple miner's cottages and residential hotels, to middle-class Italianate homes and, especially to the west near Excelsior Street, several prestigious Queen Anne mini-mansions. Refer to the Content Index for the complete listing of Granite Street addresses included in this project.