An electric trolley line ran the length of Excelsior Avenue beginning in 1897, but the side streets in the Northwest-Big Butte Neighborhood remained mostly undeveloped in 1900. By 1910 real estate developers had filled the empty lots with affordable middle-class housing in a wide variety of architectural styles. This two-story Queen Anne Free Classic style cottage, built ca. 1901, features an unusual steeply pitched and flared side-gable roof, a single hipped-roof dormer, and tapered columns supporting the half-full front porch. Frank and Lillie Conover lived here from 1902 to 1905. Frank traveled the northwest selling paper products for the Passmore Paper Company and Lillie stayed home with two teenage children. Northern Pacific Railroad ticket agent Merrill K. Baysoar, his wife Daisy, and three children lived here from 1912 to 1916. Michael and Elizabeth Gill purchased the home in 1925. The Gills owned Gill’s Grocery, a small neighborhood store nearby on Henry Avenue between Lewisohn and Waukesha. Their store was one of more than two-hundred neighborhood groceries in Butte in 1928. After Elizabeth died in 1930, Michael remained in residence until 1940.
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