The house of history
Mansion carriage house lives on as private homes, tattoo parlor
The massive and elaborate carriage house that once accompanied Kalispell's Conrad Mansion disappeared from the Kalispell landscape in 1928.
What most people don't know is that the carriage house lives on today in the form of four houses and a tattoo parlor in Kalispell.
The quest to find those five pieces of the carriage house was part of Maura Morberg's undertaking as she studied old photographs and then painted the carriage house, recreating a scene that includes members of the Conrad family on horseback.
It's commonly known that the home with the turret just north of Conrad Mansion - at 244 Woodland Ave. - is one piece of the carriage house. Although the original shingle siding has been covered with stucco, the turret and gable are telltale features of the original structure. Historians say the turret was used by the Conrads' night watchman to keep an eye on the family's land holdings.
It took some legwork to track down the rest of the carriage house, Morberg said.
"I knocked on doors," she said. "I went door to door to find the home on Fifth Avenue."
On the Fifth Avenue home, much of the original shingle siding had been covered up during a remodel. It didn't immediately look similar to the other pieces of the carriage house, but a historic marker at the home, 19 Fifth Ave. E., authenticates the structure.
Two homes in the 600 block of Third Street East, directly behind the turreted home on Woodland Avenue, are other pieces of the carriage house and bear the telltale shingle siding.
Morberg couldn't figure out the configuration of one of the Third Street East homes until she realized the building had been placed on the lot sideways.
The fifth piece of the carriage house was moved to 393 N. Main St., where Scott Publishing Co. operated for many years. Tattoos by Big Bill now occupies the building.
SPOKANE ARCHITECT Kirtland Cutter designed both the mansion and the carriage house. Charles and Alicia Conrad moved into the mansion in 1895, and after Charles Conrad died in 1902, Alicia continued to live there until 1923.
Morberg speculates that Alicia's finances were dwindling by the time Alonzo J. Dean, president of the local Chamber of Commerce, purchased the stable complex in 1928 and had it disassembled and broken into home-sized pieces. Architect Fred Brinkman brought about the transformation of each piece from stable to home in what the Fifth Avenue home's historical marker calls "adaptive reuse."
According to "Kalispell Cornerstones" by Jim Atkinson and Gail Shay Atkinson, Dean moved into the turreted piece of the carriage house after it was converted by Brinkman into a "Tudor cottage 'period house' of the 1920s suburban movement."
Timber for the barn and carriage house was shipped from out of state by rail, and structurally, the barn "was significant in its use of pegged post and beam construction and its use of heavy oak timber," according to "Kalispell Cornerstones."
A BOOK written by James E. Murphy in 1976, the year the refurbished mansion opened to the public, contains a treasure trove of details about the carriage house.
The servant quarters were located there and underground were four large stone-walled rooms that served as root cellars for fruits, vegetables, canned goods and cured meats - "enough for any number of unexpected guests or any emergency," Murphy wrote.
The carriage house was filled with a variety of wheeled vehicles, sleds and sleighs to accommodate the Conrad family's love of outdoor recreation.
"The finest was the Victoria for formal use," Murphy noted. "At the front was the driver's box for the uniformed driver and footman. It was drawn by four horses and could carry four people…"
Two-seated Surreys "that really did have fringe on the top" were part of the entourage. One-horse traps, smaller children's carts for Shetland ponies and a Gladstone wagon completed the summer vehicles. In the winter, the family relied on a huge Russian sleigh "that turned the heads of passers-by as it seemed to fly along the snow-packed city streets and country roads," Murphy wrote. There were smaller sleighs and cutters for other uses.
The Conrads' love of the outdoors is well-documented.
The couple often rode horseback through the hills surrounding Kalispell. When they were looking for a place to put a cemetery, the Conrads selected a hillside east of Kalispell that offered panoramic views of the Flathead Valley. History books say it was a special place where the couple would go horseback riding on summer evenings.
After her husband's death in 1902 (Charles Conrad was the first person buried in Conrad Cemetery), Alicia would travel to the cemetery by carriage on a road along the Stillwater River that no longer exists.
Behind the Conrad family mausoleum, the land drops steeply to the river, and can be descended by using the "fairy steps," a winding stone staircase built for Alicia Conrad's use.
She often would take the carriage to the back side of the cemetery and use the staircase to get to the mausoleum. Through the years, the steps took on a mythical quality. As legend has it, if a person counts the steps going down, it's a different number than when going back up.
THE SITE where the stately carriage house stood is now occupied by private homes at 245 and 247 Woodland Avenue, directly east of the mansion. The original carriage gate remains intact.
The mansion and carriage-house grounds were once accompanied by 76 acres of fenced park that included what is now Woodland Park and the lowlands to the east. According to Murphy, the fenced park was home to deer, elk, wild fowl, peacocks, rabbits and other wildlife. It was discontinued and the animals were set free after Charles Conrad's death.
Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com