The Artist That He Was: Remembering Architect Fred Willson
By B. Derek Strahn
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Gallatin County Courthouse, 1940
photo courtesy Pioneer Museum
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Of those that have shaped Montana’s communities, few had a more lasting impact than Fred F. Willson. As one of the most prolific and wide-ranging architects in the Treasure State during the first half of the 20th century, Willson designed literally hundreds of residential, commercial, civic, religious, educational and industrial buildings throughout western Montana, most of which still stand today.
Fred Willson was the only son of Lester and Emma Weeks Willson. His distinguished father, a celebrated Civil War hero, was promoted to the rank of Brevet Brigadier General “for gallant and meritorious service under General Sherman at Atlanta.” After the deadliest conflict in American history, the elder Willson served as Assistant Quartermaster General of the State of New York. Sensing opportunity in the post-war West, Lester relocated to Bozeman, MT, in April of 1867, where he established a lucrative mercantile business with partner Charles Rich. Two years later, the ambitious Willson returned to the East to marry Emma D. Weeks, an accomplished musician and singer.
Together the couple returned to Bozeman, then a town of just two dozen buildings, and settled in a crude log cabin, which was dominated by the first piano in Gallatin County. In a 1940 speech to the Q-K Club, Fred Willson remembered “the room growing dark at times” when his mother “was singing and playing,” and the cabin’s windows “filled with the faces of Indians and the rougher element of the day,” who had “congregated to listen.” Filled with creative energy and ideas for improvement, the Willson home quickly became a center of civic life in a fledgling frontier community. More than a practice place of local bands and orchestras, the modest home had “much to do with the organization of various societies and churches” in the Gallatin Valley and, in this manner, Willson recalled, that dynamic place “had its effect in the development of the community.”
Young Fred, the only one of three Willson children to reach adulthood, was born into this cultured, civic-minded environment in 1877. As the fortunate son of well-connected western pioneers, his future success and pronounced impact on his community was all but assured.
Willson received his early education in public schools, attended the Bozeman Academy for four years, and entered Montana State College as one of the charter students of that institution. After completing his junior year in Bozeman, he took up the study of architecture at Columbia University in New York City, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture in 1902. Later, the budding professional lived in Europe for a time, where he continued his studies at “the foremost architectural school in the world,” the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.
It was during this formative time that Willson traveled extensively through England, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy and Spain. His keen eyes drank in the sites, and he developed a deep and lasting admiration for the architectural traditions of the past. Willson fine-tuned his craft in the shadow of Europe’s great landmarks, and these fine buildings became the influential standard by which the young Willson would judge and practice the architectural profession throughout the productive decades that followed. From the outset, Willson’s originality of design was, as Tom Stout noted in his 1921 work Montana: Its Story and Biography, “tempered by the broad and thorough knowledge he has of architecture as exemplified in the best creations of all the centuries and in the greatest centers of art in the civilized world.”
Willson returned to Montana in 1906, becoming the first native son of his young state to practice architecture. In the booming mining city of Butte, he managed the local office of the well-known firm Link and Haire, but Willson’s heart resided with his friends and family in Bozeman.
As his relationship with his future wife, Helen, blossomed, so did the number of jobs in the Gallatin Valley, where no professionally-trained architects yet resided. From almost the beginning of his tenure with his employers in Butte, Willson was garnering contracts and overseeing projects in Bozeman for the firm’s principals—most significantly the impressive Tudor Revival and Arts-and-Crafts Style T. Byron Story Mansion at 811 South Willson Avenue—which is commonly attributed to architect C.S. Haire. As early as 1906, Willson was also designing residences of his own in Bozeman.
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Ellen Thearter, circa 1925
photo courtesy Pioneer Museum
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In 1909, Willson concluded that he could make a living in Bozeman after he received two notable contracts there—the Fisher Residence, which still stands at 712 South Willson Avenue, and Hamilton Hall, a “home away from home” that, in addition to two floors of dorm rooms, featured a music room, library, and “fudge kitchen” for women attending Montana State College. Perhaps momentarily obsessed with the curvilinear parapets, quatrefoil windows, and tiled roofs of Spanish architectural traditions, Willson designed both buildings in the Mission Revival Style which, at the time, was virtually unknown in Montana. His bold efforts were well received, however, and in December of 1909, the Bozeman Courier dubbed the starkly beautiful Fisher home, “one of the most unique as well as the prettiest residences in Bozeman.”
In the fruitful decades that followed, Willson continued to simultaneously churn out a host of private and public landmarks. Like Bozeman, not to mention Willson himself, most were conservative expressions of European architectural traditions, rather than innovative, ground-breaking, or forward-looking statements of originality. Willson’s ego was less important, it seems, than his loving respect for the integrity of the past.
Scattered throughout Bozeman’s architecturally impressive south side are a wonderful array of private residences touched by Willson’s temperate prowess. Dozens of beautiful “period homes,” including the Georgian Blair House at 415 South Willson Avenue, the Craftsman-Style Purdum Residence at 602 West Story, and the incredible Neo-Chateauesque Graf House at 504 West Cleveland Avenue—complete with its weighty copper mansard roof—were products of Willson’s romantic vision and talented hand.
Among Willson’s best known public landmarks in Bozeman are the original Gallatin County Jail building at 317 West Main Street, the First Baptist Church at 120 West Grand Avenue, the Gothic Revival Emerson School at 111 South Grand Avenue, the Neo-Classical Ellen Theater at 17 West Main Street, the Neo-Classical Baxter Hotel at 105 West Main Street, the Art Deco Gallatin County Courthouse at 311 West Main Street, and the Streamline Moderne Gallatin County High School at 404 West Main Street, which was renamed Willson School following his death in 1956.
Bozeman’s native son also continued to design several impressive edifices on the campus of his alma mater, including, Roberts and Herrick Halls, the Heating Plant, as well as the original Student Union Building, the Quadrangle, and later the Field House (with Oswald Berg).
But Fred Willson’s amazing body of work extended well beyond his home town. His early connections in the mining and smelting communities of Butte and Anaconda, for example, brought several jobs, including the original Butte Country Club (1910), the Christian Brother High School (1923), and Holy Savior Parish (1927) in Butte, and the ACM Athletic Club (1913), the Daly Bank and Trust Annex (1914), St. Peter’s Convent (1922), and the distinctive Club Moderne (1937) in Anaconda.
As Willson’s work in Bozeman clearly attests, state and local governmental projects were undoubtedly his bread and butter. This was true elsewhere, as well. In nearby Belgrade, for example, the architect designed the town’s Fire Hall (1911) and City Hall (1912). In Twin Bridges, Willson envisioned the State Orphan’s Home Hospital (1913) and in Dillon the Town Hall (1913). Following completion of the 1918 Emerson School at 111 South Grand in Bozeman, which “attracted the attention and admiration of educational bodies all over the United States,” Willson created many educational facilities, including high schools in Columbus (1918-21), Livingston (1938), and Manhattan (1948), as well as numerous one-room school houses in small towns across the state.
Federally funded projects—most notably in Yellowstone National Park—were also arrows in Willson’s formidable quiver. In addition to numerous smaller projects, like guest cabins, dormitories, boathouses, garages, and campground facilities, he designed the Camp Cody Lunch Station (1923) and Canyon Lodge Hotel (1927) in America’s Wonderland.
A host of New Deal projects, such as those financed by Franklin Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration, kept Willson working as many as 18 hours a day during most of the Great Depression. “Guess I still have a family,” Willson lamented in his personal diary in April of 1935, “but I see very little of them.”
Many communities still enjoy—even define themselves in relation to—the fruits of Willson’s labors. In many instances, most certainly in Bozeman, but elsewhere too, Willson’s buildings continue to be celebrated as important, character-defining local landmarks. The Sacajawea Inn in Three Forks, Eagle’s Store in West Yellowstone, and Soldier’s Chapel in Big Sky are but three obvious examples.
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T. Byron Story Mansion
photo courtesy Museum of the Rockies
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While Willson’s sheer productivity is certainly extraordinary—his job list reveals that he was involved with more than 1815 different projects throughout his career—what is perhaps even more impressive is the incredible stylistic diversity and artistic integrity of his many designs. Gymnasiums, grocery stores, banks, bakeries, theaters, beef cattle barns, hotels, cottages, warehouses, jails, coal sheds, curio shops, filling stations, dance halls, monuments, and mansions—all flowed from a single, gifted source. Recognizing this fact, The Encyclopedia of Northwest Biography noted that Willson’s body of work “combined a wide and accurate scholarship, embracing all schools of architecture, with a functional adaptation of design to the needs of modern life, revealing an informed taste and versatile creative powers.”
When Fred Willson died of a heart attack in August of 1956, Bozeman mourned the loss of one of its “most useful and highly beloved citizens.” Bozeman’s Daily Chronicle put it well. “Whatever sort of marker will stand over his resting place,” the paper noted, “his lasting monument will be his college buildings on the hill, the sensible public schools that will always be modern for generations to come, the countless homes and other buildings he designed throughout the state he knew, and loved, so well.” Willson’s “architectural monuments...will ever remind us of the artist that he was,” his obituary accurately predicted and, thankfully, his profound legacy will endure for many generations yet to come.
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