Anaconda Property Listed in National Register of Historic Places

• February 27 2023

Hidden behind narrow wood boards and altered doors and windows of The Starr Block in Anaconda is the story of the most visible and substantial Black-owned business in town in the early 1900s.

Lee Pleasant Driver was a graduate of Fisk University – historically one of the top Black universities – and a 25^th Infantry veteran who was discharged as a corporal at Fort Missoula in 1891. He operated a saloon in Missoula for a year before settling in Anaconda as a 30-year-old well-educated and worldly man.

In Anaconda, his bar and café changed locations a few times, but it was the most visible and substantial Black-owned business, serving a wide range of customers for 20 years. The final move in 1909 brought him to The Starr Block, which was individually listed Feb. 7 in the National Register of Historic Places for being a cornerstone of the area’s Black community.

“It served African American and other customers and functioned as a focal point, and physical and institutional core, of the local Black community, an exemplar of Black achievement, and an autonomous space managed by, and supportive of, African American residents,” states the Historic Register’s nominating documents. “Driver’s Saloon and Café is significantly associated with the Montana African American community during the community’s peak years in the early 20th century, and it closed during Black Montana’s post-1910 contraction.”

The brick Starr Block was constructed in 1889. Lee, his wife Pearl, and their first son lived upstairs while they ran the business. After they closed their downtown bar and café business, the Driver family homesteaded on 275 acres near Opportunity. They raised seven children who became prominent members of Montana’s Black community, and the family continues to be an integral part of the Treasure State.

A bicycle/skate shop and realty business now occupy the ground floor of The Starr Block, with apartments dominating the above second floor space.

The owner of the building believes that the original historic construction materials, including the original brick wall, remain beneath the lower story non-historic cladding of the Italianate/Renaissance Revival structure.

“Lee Pleasant Driver’s Saloon and Café in Anaconda stands as one of the few extant African American commercial property types in Montana,” the nomination form states. “The presence of these historic buildings easily helps communicate the Driver’s Saloon & Café’s historic setting, along with feeling and association. Mr. Driver would today undoubtedly recognize the Starr Block as his former place of business indicating the sufficient retention of feeling and association. Former patrons of the business would also readily identify the building as both a place to gather and as a Black-owned business.”