Historic Name:
Stone Ordean & Wells
Current Name:
St. Vincent de Paul store

Builder:
Unknown

Original Use:
Wholesale Store
Current Use:
Thrift Store

Physical Description:
This is a two story commercial building of heavy brick construction that stands between Billings' Northern Pacific railroad tracks and Montana Avenue. The primary façades face north onto Montana Avenue, and west onto 27th Street; the rear is outfitted with loading docks and faces the tracks.

On the north, this primary elevation is faced with brown brick and trimmed with white cast stone. The façade is divided into multiple bays by raised brick pilasters trimmed at the caps with small cast stone blocks. An entrance is placed near the west corner, and is accentuated by a decorative cornice of cast stone. Another, similar entrance is located on the west elevation, near center. On the north and west, large storefront windows are divided by three vertical lights, with hopper transoms in the tops. On the second story, each bay has a narrow three-pane hopper window in the upper portion. The parapet is decorated with diamonds of cast stone set above each pilaster, and band of decorative brickwork. White cast stone coping finishes the facades.

On the south, a concrete dock projects toward the railroad tracks. It is enclosed by plywood siding, and covered with a metal shed roof on the west. The original sliding wooden door, clad with tongue and groove siding still accesses the dock. On the upper stories, large multi-pane windows are banded together to illuminate the interior. East and west sides of the building rise above the immediate neighbors. These sides have been parged with concrete.

Historical Associations:
From Billings' earliest days, warehouses were located in the area around the railroad tracks at the heart of downtown. This warehouse district grew and became denser as the town became larger and the business base expanded. By the early 20th century, there was a whole array of warehouses holding all the goods that the growing city's population demanded. The available lots in the vicinity of the tracks were filled with a wide variety of retail and wholesale businesses. During the 1910s, the railroad added to the available space in the warehouse district by leasing their property along the south side of Montana Avenue to several business houses. In the years that followed, several warehouses and retailers were added to the heart of the commercial district.

Stone-Ordean-Wells Co was a large wholesale grocery based in downtown Billings at 502 N 27th Street during the early 1900s. The firm built this building between 1914-1916 and remained here through the 1930s. After that time, Ryan Grocery Co was based in this large building.

Historical and Architectural Significance:
The Stone Ordean & Wells building is representative of the last wave of warehouse and wholesale building construction to occur between the Minnesota-Montana business corridors. Constructed at a time when downtown was densely built up, these large businesses housed a wide variety of goods being shipped in and out of the Billings market by rail. Many goods came in by rail to local warehouses and were distributed out to retailers throughout town or freighted to outlying smaller towns. Conversely, locally grown agricultural products were always a mainstay of the local economy, and were brought by farmers and ranchers into the warehouse district to depart by rail for markets elsewhere. Marketers like Stone Ordean & Wells were a vital link in this economy.

The building itself is one of the best preserved of its kind, and serves as a good example of the type.

Photo Courtesy of Paul Whiting