Dust to dazzle

By Holly Michels, of The Montana Standard - 06/29/2007

The Andrew Jackson Davis house, owned by the Yarringtons, is at 845 W. Granite Street in Uptown Butte. Photo by Lisa Kunkel / The Montana Standard.

The focal point in the entry of Josh and Darcel Yarrington’s Granite Street home is a sculpture Josh calls “The Lady of the Stairs.’’

The lady, created by Spanish artist Rigual in the 1900s, was a gift from the Butte Oppenheimer family to the home’s first owner, banker Andrew Jackson Davis, around the turn of the century.

Josh and Darcel moved into the historic property more than two years ago.

On Saturday, Josh will open the doors to anyone with a ticket as the the house, along with five other properties, make up the third Dust to Dazzle tour put on by Butte Citizens for Preservation and Revitalization.

The tour highlights Butte’s old buildings and houses that owners have rehabilitated.

“We have what we call three dust and three dazzle,” CPR volunteer Kelly Rose said.

Yarrington’s house, she said, is a dazzle, but Josh said it took a while.

“Trying to live and survive in a renovated house is interesting, to say the least,” he said.

Yarrington moved out of his master bedroom three weeks ago to facilitate tearing down the room’s “hideous” pink wallpaper.

“It could almost be frightening when you wake up in the morning,” he said.

But Yarrington made it clear the renovations are cosmetic, and said the house is in amazing condition for its age. The home, one of the “twin’’ homes on the 800 block of Granite Street, was built in 1890 for more than $7,000. Comparable homes in Butte at the time cost about $1,000, according to CPR.

“The previous owners have all been tremendous stewards,” he said.

Style and decorating tastes change over the decades.

“In the ’20s only poor people had unpainted wood,” he said.

Thus the light blue color over original cherry built-ins and door frames in the dining room and dated flower-motif wallpaper in the living room.

Most of the home’s original woodwork is preserved, from the oak and cherry inlays in the entryway and sitting room-turned-billiards room.

The windows boast two original Tiffany stained glass works.

“Those are from when everybody was a millionaire back in Butte.’’

Outside, Yarrington points out unique decorative work.

Red plaster on the east side of the house, hand scribed to look like brick, was put on in the early 1900s to protect the original masonry work, he said.

Yarrington thinks it’s the only house with this type of exterior west of the Mississippi.

The property also has a 2,000-square-foot carriage house with perhaps Montana’s largest working freight-style residential elevator, once used to lift carriages and sleighs to the second floor for storage.

The Yarringtons moved to the Mining City from California with hopes of finding an older, affordable historic home. Josh works at Resodyn in Butte and Darcel commutes to Santa Monica to work in the advertising industry.

“This house in San Francisco is five or seven million dollars,” Josh said. “We looked at over 100 houses before we picked this one, and it’s amazing to find a house like this we can afford.” Yarrington said the hardest part of renovations is finding the time to do work and “getting someone to return a call."

He said he’s had a hard time finding painters and wallpaper strippers and did a lot of the work himself.

“There’s a big difference between stripping one versus five layers of wallpaper,” he said.

Reporter Holly Michels can be reached via e-mail at holly.michels@lee.net