Parrot Block

Parrot Block. Anaconda Commercial Historic District. Prosperous Deer Lodge Valley rancher George Parrot invested $13,000 to build the Parrot Block in 1896. The first story of this well-appointed Queen Anne style commercial and boardinghouse building originally featured tall, plate-glass display windows topped by a wide grid of small prism-glass tiles. The well-preserved second story reflects the period’s taste for rich and varied textures and showcases the bricklayer’s masterful work. A central stained-glass transom window originally attracted attention to the building’s cast-iron nameplate above it. The crenelated parapet and granite details still lend an air of imposing permanence. Lodgers and businesses rented the upstairs rooms while some of Anaconda’s best-known retailers occupied the storefronts below. The Goodfriend Clothing Co., the Kelly Commercial Co. grocery store, and other retailers operated here in the early 1900s. F. W. Woolworth’s five-and-dime store occupied the building from the mid-1930s to 1958. MacIntyre’s, in business in Anaconda since 1909, sold clothing here from 1960 to 2004. In 2006, new owners renovated the building and renamed it the Francisco Building, in honor of Robert and Mary Francisco, who owned MacIntyre’s for more than twenty years.