Carriage House Historic District

About this property

The Carriage House Historic District in Miles City, Montana was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. The historic district contained 54 contributing buildings and 21 non-contributing ones, on the 900 to 1100 blocks of Pleasant and Palmer Avenues and on cross streets. Nine locations feature signs describing the property. E. H. Johnson, state legislator and Miles City's first mayor, built this impressive modified Queen Anne style home in 1887. Attributed to Miles City architect Byron Vreeland, the irregular plan originally featured an elaborate arched porch and an elliptical bay capped by a conical roof. Rancher William Harmon, the home's second owner, built the carriage house in 1891. Third owner Senator Kenneth McLean, following current architectural trends, added Neo-classical details and a wraparound veranda between 1903 and 1910. Ella M. and David G. Rivenes purchased the property in 1962. Nannie Alderson came to Montana from Kansas with her husband Walt in 1883. They operated a cattle ranch for a decade but moved to Miles City in 1893 so their children could attend school. In 1895, Walt died from head injuries after he was kicked by a horse. Left with four children between the ages of two and eleven, Nannie built this home for her family. She scraped by, selling home-baked bread and milk from the family's cow and catering meals. She also took in boarders. Nannie moved the family to Birney in 1902. Later in her life, Nannie earned wide acclaim for her pioneer reminiscence, A Bride Goes West, published in 1942. Her quaint wood-frame home retains its Greek Revival style footprint, once common in Miles City, but rarely preserved. Changes, including alteration of the front porch and the addition of side entry canopies in the 1910s, add an interesting layer. These reflect changing tastes and the growing popularity of the bungalow style in the early twentieth century. An eclectic blend of Romanesque, Gothic, and Queen Anne architectural styles, this 1886 church survives as designer Byron Vreeland's most significant building in Montana. Vreeland blended these styles as his architectural signature in many of his structures. The church features a barrel-vaulted wood ceiling trimmed with California redwood, a large Gothic style stained glass rose window in the entry gable above the canopy, and decorative brick work in a mouse-toothed pattern along the end elevations. The only alteration has been the removal of the bell tower. The interior features a walnut altar created from the salvaged hardwood finish of a steamboat that wrecked on the Buffalo Rapids below town about 1880. The altar is a rare survivor of steamboat architecture in Montana, the principal component of the “Wooden City” phase of building between 1878 and the early 1880s in Miles City. As the only known church designed by Vreeland, the Episcopal Church has continuously served the city for over a century and remains a unique work.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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