Mueller Apartments

Mueller Apartments. Butte National Historic Landmark District. Turn-of-the-century critics called apartment living “a shortcut . . . to the divorce court.” These moralists believed that the proximity of bedrooms to living areas, and the easy access to both by neighbors, encouraged promiscuity, while apartment dwellers’ limited housekeeping duties encouraged a dangerous lack of domesticity among wives. Nevertheless, apartments increasingly attracted middle-class residents, particularly young, childless couples, older couples whose children had grown, and bachelors and working women, who didn’t need as much space as larger families. White-collar workers occupied the five-story, fifty-five-unit Mueller Apartments, built in 1917 as an investment by A. H. Mueller, president of Centennial Brewing Company. The building incorporates Italian Renaissance style design elements: a symmetrical façade, a rusticated first story, keystone arches over the first-floor windows, and paired brackets and dentils under the cornice. Stained glass windows decorate the front entrance while a belt course and a distinct window pattern distinguish the fifth-floor penthouse apartments. These elegant, yet restrained architectural details announce the building’s respectability and, by extension, the respectability of its tenants, who included teachers, a doctor, salesclerks, accountants, and business owners.