923 West Mercury

In 1896, W. Mead Hanson departed Utah for Butte with his wife, Nellie, and their children. Leaving his job as mail clerk for a short-gauge railroad, the thirty-two-year-old Mead opened a cigar store in the Lewishon Building in the heart of Uptown. By 1900, the family had purchased this home, then a duplex.

The Hansons lived on one side and rented the other to machinist Timothy Martin and his family (including his wife, sister-in-law, two children, and a nursemaid). Only one other residence stood on the block, even though developers had started selling lots ten years earlier; construction had only just begun on the massive Paul Clark Home across the street.

By 1916, the Hansons had converted the duplex into a single-family home and neighbors on both sides crowded their onestory, hipped-roof, four-square cottage. The couple remained in residence until Mead—by then working as an insurance agent—died in 1932. An unusual two-story outhouse—on site throughout the Hansons’ residency—still stood behind the home in 1957, a surprising remnant of an earlier time.