The Havre Residential Historic District is a site on the National Register of Historic Places encompassing 36 blocks in Havre, Montana.
The Havre Residential Historic District represents Havre's economic growth and social change from 1895 to the 1940s. Located primarily at the district's northwestern edge, turn-of-the-century homes of the social and business elite are large residences built in Queen Anne/Colonial Revival and Neo-Colonial styles. Their owners’ fortunes were made from providing supplies and services to soldiers at nearby Fort Assinniboine, homesteaders, and Great Northern Railway employees. As a railroad division point, Havre became home to white-collar workers who built smaller homes in the district. By 1907, the Craftsman bungalow was the preferred housing style. These smaller, one- or one-and-a-half-story dwellings reflect the security of the middle class in Montana during the first decades of the twentieth century. Havre's establishment as Hill County seat in 1912 coincided with the Progressive political movement that sought clean cities with suitable housing for all. Between 1913 and 1917, the Home Builders Investment Company—created by local Progressives—built more than 100 homes. Post World War I depression dampened construction in the district, but late-1920s railroad expansion caused a housing boom. Homes subsequently built here during the Great Depression utilized lower-cost materials and simpler designs.
Contributing properties
Boone/Dalrymple House (132 3rd Street) The sunburst motif on the front gable end of this single-story, hipped-roof residence signals the builder's debt to the Queen Anne style. Havre pioneer Daniel H. Boone and his wife, Elizabeth, owned the four-square residence. Built before 1903 and perhaps as early as 1892, it is among Havre's older homes. The technologically advanced Boones installed a telephone in 1903 and indoor plumbing in 1906. Boone owned a drug store on Third Avenue, an easy three-block walk from here. The store burned in the devastating 1904 fire that destroyed over 90 percent of downtown. Boone's fortunes, like those of most Havre businessmen, rose from the ashes. By 1910, he was selling prescriptions and sundries from a brick business block that graced the same corner as his old wooden store. The home's longest-term residents were dentist Sidney Dalrymple and his wife, Alma, who purchased the property in 1929. Likely responsible for updating the exterior by enclosing and adding Craftsman-style windows to the original front porch, the Dalrymples lived here until their deaths, Sidney's in 1983 and Alma's in 1995.
Carlin House
There was no sign of the impending Great Depression in January 1929. Havre had spent half a million dollars on construction the year before, and the future looked bright. Among those kept busy by Havre's growth was prolific local builder Christ Fuglevand. Fuglevand, who built over fifty homes in Havre, constructed this single-story stucco residence in 1929 for an estimated $4,550. The house featured Craftsman-style detailing, including a low-pitched roof with wide overhanging eaves, exposed rafter tails, and a half-length porch with massive wood and cobblestone porch supports. Dan Carlin, a yardmaster for the Great Northern Railway, and his wife Clara were the home's first owners. The couple rented the daylight basement apartment for $60 a month to a dry goods store manager and his family. An increasingly common feature in Havre after 1929, such apartments frequently provided housing for students attending the Northern Montana School. This precursor to MSU-Billings was founded in 1929.
Crosson-VanBuskirk Home (436 4th Avenue) Prominent builder Abe Crosson acquired this property in 1911. By 1916, a booster brochure proclaimed the frame Colonial Revival residence one of Havre's beautiful homes. In 1936, Great Northern Railroad conductor Ray VanBuskirk and his Irish-born wife, Marie, purchased the residence, establishing a home that has since spanned three generations. Their son, Warren, a railroad dispatcher, brought his Italian-American wife, Edith, to live here in 1948. Warren and Edith, offspring of Havre's rich ethnic population and railroading tradition, together raised five children in the home.