Book
Description
Coming Home
A Special Issue Devoted to the Historic Built Environment and Landscapes of Butte and Anaconda, Montana
A joint venture of Drumlummon Institute & the Montana Preservation Alliance:
Patty Dean, Guest Editor
Foreword by The Honorable Pat Williams
Cover art by Lisa Wareham
Coming Home was made possible through generous support from the National Park Service Challenge Cost Share Program;
Humanities Montana, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities; and
a National Park Service Preserve America Grant administered through the State Historic Preservation Office, Montana Historical Society.
Perhaps the most scrutinized and documented of Montana cities, Butte and Anaconda possess great material and cultural incongruities that continue to intrigue and beguile: natural beauty versus industrial landscape, great wealth versus subsistence and poverty, ornate buildings designed by nationally known architects versus alley hovels, urban density versus the void of the Berkeley Pit.
This special issue of Drumlummon Views, the online journal of Montana arts and culture (www.drumlummon.org), seeks to shed fresh light on the industrial and domestic landscapes that make these cities so distinctive.
The issue features essays, portfolios, and reprints that make accessible such underutilized/ forgotten historic resources as an early 20th-century newspaper series profiling “queer spots” in and around Butte and Anaconda (e.g. Chinese gardens, the “Assyrian colony” on East Park, the Cree village on the Butte Flats), historic photographs of sanitary conditions in Butte’s working class neighborhoods, and a 1907 article on arts and crafts homes in Butte.
In addition, the issue offers new research on the landscape and architecture of Butte and Anaconda as a manifestation of dominance and power, multi-family building forms in Butte, Anaconda’s roundhouse, and Butte's iconic mine headframes. Scholars such as Brian Shovers, Fred Quivik, Chere Jiusto, and Carroll Van West whose works have long focused on the Montana landscape and built environment share their current perspectives while a newer generation of historians such as Matt Basso and Kate Hampton introduce readers to emerging topics of interest.
The issue also includes works by visual artists, writers, and poets (Edwin Dobb, Lisa Wareham, Ron Fischer, Joeann Daley, and Dennice Scanlon) who reflect on, interpret, and document the landscapes and cultures that make these places so extraordinary.
Reviews
Book mines yet more nuggets of area history
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