Kleinschmidt Block

Kleinschmidt Block. (Harvard Block). Entrepreneur Reinhold H. Kleinschmidt built this block with five storefronts and upstairs lodging rooms circa 1892. Among his first commercial tenants was Charles Grossman, a wallpaper hanger and painter, whose business was in the corner storefront. A variety of tenants in 1900 included a U.S. bailiff, a photographer, and a Northern Pacific land examiner and their families. In 1905, real estate developer Richard Lockey purchased the building to serve as an annex to his Grandon Hotel and changed its name to the Harvard Block. The Grandon stood diagonally across Sixth Avenue. By 1929, Edward Loney’s barbershop in the corner storefront was the only remaining commercial space and the rest of the building functioned as housing. The building is a stunning example of the flamboyant Victorian-era architecture once common in Helena. Fluted iron columns and scrolled brackets frame the entry while the rounded brick arches on the second story reflect the Romanesque style. A spectacular copper dome originally capped the second-story oriel bay at the southwest corner. These elements contrast with the utilitarian rubble stone walls on the rear and north, common in Helena’s nineteenth-century buildings.