Joseph and Emma Baker Residence

In 1904, banker Joseph Baker and his wife Emma chose the Colonial Revival style for their new home—the second house constructed on this block. The home’s design offered a fashionable alternative to the exuberant Queen Anne style, which dominated residential architecture in the 1880s and 1890s. In place of Queen Anne’s jumbled angles and textures, dignified Colonial Revival homes like the Bakers’ offered quiet elegance.

They featured symmetrical façades, accentuated entryways, and understated, yet well thought-out details. For the Baker house, such details included dentils beneath the eaves, a flared chimney, oak and fir trim on the interior, and diamondpaned windows in the front dormer. Behind the home stands a matching carriage house with a hayloft on its second floor.

The almost perfectly square residence sits on three lots. Its prized location on the corner of one of Bozeman’s grandest streets speaks to the social prominence of its original owners, who lived here until Joseph’s death in 1934.