WHY PRESERVE?

Historic preservation

  • builds civic pride
  • encourages tourism
  • educates residents and visitors about community heritage
  • stimulates economic development, revitalizing depressed neighborhoods
  • stabilizes buildings, enhancing value of rents, generating business opportunity, and increasing property values and tax base
  • builds positive partnerships among government, civic, educational, and private organizations
  • infuses revenue to preservation-related businesses
  • in Butte, our rich history is the key to our ongoing claim to being "the richest hill on earth"

  • See also CPR Objectives • Commentary by John Ray • Montana Standard opinion
  • Governor's Historic Properties Report

Builder’s Song

Author unknown

I saw them tear a building down,
A gang of men in a busy town.
With a ho-heave-ho and a lusty yell
They swung a beam and the side wall fell.

I asked the foreman, “Are these men skilled,
As the men you would hire if you had to build?”
He laughed and said, “No indeed;
Just common labor is all I need.
I can easily wreck in a day or two
What builders have taken years to do.”

I asked myself as I went my way,
“Which of these roles have I tried to play?
Am I builder who works with care,
Measuring life by the rule and square,
Or am I a wrecker who walks the town
Content with the labor of tearing down?”

BUTTE CPR • P.O. Box 164 • Butte, Montana 59703 • E-mail