J.K. Merrill and Sons Dry Goods

By editor

Philipsburg, Granite County, Montana, 1892-1897

The building at 131 East Broadway was constructed between 1892 and 1894, which means it was built during the last years of the silver boom and completed just in time for the crash. J.K. Merrill and Sons put up twelve thousand square feet of floor space on two stories, with a three-bay facade and a second-story pressed metal colonnade that made the building look like it belonged in a larger city. Philipsburg in 1892 was a town that believed it was going to become a larger city. The Granite Mountain Mine was producing two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month. The Bi-Metallic Mine was running alongside it. The streets were full of men with wages, and the merchants who served them were building accordingly.

Twelve thousand square feet is a large building for a town of three thousand people. To put it in perspective: a standard basketball court is about five thousand square feet. The Merrill building had more than twice that, spread across two floors, stocked with dry goods, clothing, groceries, hardware, and wholesale liquors. This was not a general store. This was a department store in a mining town, the kind of establishment that required a substantial and reliable customer base to justify its inventory.

Merrill and Sons did not stay long. By 1893, Freyschlag Huffman and Company had taken the location for its general merchandise emporium. The timing is notable: 1893 is the year the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed, the year the price of silver fell by half, the year three thousand people left Granite in twenty-four hours. Freyschlag Huffman moved into twelve thousand square feet of floor space in a town that was in the process of losing a third of its population. They stocked dry goods, clothing, groceries, hardware, and wholesale liquors, which is everything a person needs to survive a Montana winter and a few things that make the winter more bearable. The floor space was generous for what the town was becoming.

The wholesale liquors deserve a note. In a mining town in the 1890s, wholesale liquors were not a luxury item. They were a staple, sold in quantity to the saloons on the south side of Broadway and to the boarding houses and to individuals who preferred to buy by the case. The eighteen saloons that Philipsburg supported during the boom years required a steady supply, and a general merchandise emporium that did not carry wholesale liquors was leaving money on the table. Freyschlag Huffman did not leave money on the table.

The pressed metal colonnade on the second story is worth a moment's attention. Pressed metal -- also called stamped metal or tin ceiling -- was a fashionable building material in the 1890s, used to imitate carved stone at a fraction of the cost. A merchant in a boom town who wanted his building to look substantial without paying for actual stone could order pressed metal panels from a catalog and have them installed in a matter of days. The result looked expensive from the street, which was the point. The three-bay facade and the colonnade together made the Merrill building one of the most visually prominent commercial structures on East Broadway, which was the right address to be prominent on in Philipsburg in 1892.

By 1897, the building had become the Bi-Metallic Mining company store. This is the trajectory of a mining town after the boom ends: the general merchandise emporiums that served independent miners and their families become company stores that serve the reduced workforce that remains when the independent operators have left and the large company has bought up the surviving claims. The Bi-Metallic Mine reopened in a smaller way after the 1893 crash, and the company needed a store to supply its workers, and the largest commercial building on East Broadway was available. The twelve thousand square feet that had been planned for a boom town became the supply depot for a company operation.

A company store is a different institution than a general merchandise emporium. In a general merchandise emporium, a customer chooses what to buy and where to buy it. In a company store, the company decides what is available, sets the prices, and often pays its workers in scrip that can only be spent at the company store. The Bi-Metallic Mining company store at 131 East Broadway was not necessarily as exploitative as the worst examples of the genre, but it operated on the same principle: the company controlled the supply, and the workers depended on the supply.

The Bi-Metallic Mine eventually closed for good, and the company store became something else, and the building changed hands and uses several times in the decades that followed. The pressed metal colonnade is still on the second story. The three-bay facade is still there. The twelve thousand square feet of floor space that J.K. Merrill and Sons built for a boom town that did not last as long as the building has lasted is still in use, which is the most that can be said for most of what was built in Philipsburg in the early 1890s.

The wholesale liquors that Freyschlag Huffman stocked are long gone, consumed by men who needed something to get through the winter of 1893 and the winters that followed. The dry goods and clothing are gone. The groceries and hardware are gone. The building is still there, its pressed metal colonnade catching the morning light on East Broadway the same way it did when the Granite Mountain Mine was producing two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month and J.K. Merrill and Sons were planning to fill twelve thousand square feet with everything a prosperous mining town could want.

See also

• J.K. Merrill and Sons Dry Goods at Philipsburg, Granite County (Montana Historical Society, erected 2011)
• Granite Ghost Town at Philipsburg, Granite County -- the silver boom town whose 1893 collapse transformed the Merrill building from a general merchandise emporium into a company store
• Wilson Brothers Building at Philipsburg, Granite County -- the neighboring commercial building that also adapted to survive the silver crash