The traditional center of the organized labor movement in Missoula is the Labor Temple building on East Main Street. In 1896, Copper baron Marcus Daly donated the land for a union hall where organizers constructed a simple frame building. Besides this original union hall, the property also housed a small performing arts theatre—the only one in Missoula—that served host to Missoula’s 1896 Democratic Convention, among other events. By 1904, fifteen unions were associated with the Missoula Trade and Labor Council and the Labor Temple became a bustling center of activity.

The Union Hall Company acquired the property in 1908, but in 1911 fire destroyed it. The property sat empty for a couple of years until October 1916, when the company began construction of a new Labor Temple. The building was completed the following summer and featured union offices, a dance hall, and lodge facilities on the second two stories. The Murphy Motor Company, meanwhile, became the occupant of the ground floor. In 1950, after the motor company vacated the property, its owners remodeled it into more office space.

Today, the hall still serves as a meeting place for labor meetings, and its ground floor is also the site of a popular Missoula watering hole, appropriately named the Union Club.

Credits and Sources:

Maechling, Philip, and Stan Cohen. Missoula: Then & Now. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing Company, 2010.

National Park Service. “ National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, Labor Temple,” 1990.

Photographs courtesy of Archives & Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, The University of Montana, Missoula, Montana.