Building a Stone Landmark

Content's Corner was built in 1864 by merchant Solomon (Sol) Content at the busy intersection of Wallace and Jackson Streets, just a year after gold was discovered in Alder Gulch. The two-story masonry building, with its pointed "Gothic" arches over doors and windows, looked modern and elegant compared with the many log and board-front stores in the mining camp. These arches gave Virginia City a more "civilized" look and suggested that the community meant to last, not vanish like many boomtowns did. Because Content s Corner stands at such a key corner, some historians think surveyors may have used it as an important reference point when they laid out the town's street grid.

When Content's Corner was finished in September 1864, grocers John S. Rockfellow and William Dennee were the first tenants while their own frame store on Jackson Street was being built. They were followed by another grocery firm, Herman, Schwab, and Loeb, who used the space until 1866. That same year, Sol Content briefly ran a clothing store in his new building before selling his stock to the Seigel Brothers, who continued the clothing business until 1872. Around 1872-1873, merchant Henry Elling moved his store into Content's Corner; when Elling turned his attention to banking in 1873, partners Armstrong and Johnson took over the business until selling it to Robert Vickers in 1883, beginning nearly a century of ownership by the Vickers-Gohn family.

Robert Vickers ran a clothing and general merchandise store at Content's Corner from 1883 until his death in 1923, serving miners, ranchers, and town families across the region. His daughter, Martha Sutenberg Castle, continued the store until 1936, and for a short time afterward another grocery business used the ground floor. In 1943, Vickers's grandson Robert "Bob" Gohn opened "Bob's Place" in the building, combining a bar, grocery, and hardware store that quickly became a favorite gathering place for locals and visitors. Bob Gohn had been blinded in a mine explosion when he was a boy, yet he memorized where everything was in the store and successfully managed the business for decades, inspiring people with his independence and skill. The Gohn family continued to operate Bob's Place into the late twentieth century, giving Content's Corner one of the longest-running family business traditions in Montana.

From 1865 to 1875, Virginia City served as the capital of Montana Territory, and many government offices rented rooms above stores instead of using separate public buildings. On the second floor of Content's Corner, the Governor and Secretary of the Territory kept their offices at different times, conducting official business just above the busy shops. After the capital moved to Helena in 1875, lawyers, surveyors, and other professionals used the upstairs rooms as offices, keeping the corner important for both business and community life. This mix of shops below and offices above was common in early western towns and helped make Content's Corner a center for daily activity in Virginia City.

Around 1895, the original Gothic-arched windows of Content's Corner were removed and replaced with a "modern" plate-glass storefront and a simpler brick front above, matching trends in other American towns that wanted larger display windows. At the time, people thought these changes looked up-to-date, but later historians felt that the alterations harmed the building's unique nineteenth-century design. In the mid-1900s, Charles and Sue Ford Bovey and, later, the Montana Heritage Commission began preserving Virginia City's historic buildings, including Content's Corner, as part of a larger effort to protect the ghost town's gold-rush heritage. Preservation work today includes stabilizing stone walls, studying old photos and plans, and planning ways to highlight or restore original features so students and visitors can better understand how an 1860s stone business block looked when Virginia City was young.

Special acknowledgements go to John D. Ellingsen, John N. DeHaas, Tony Dalich, Ken Sievert, Tom Cook, and Ellen Baumler of the Montana Historical Society, whose research and interpretation have helped tell the story of Content's Corner to students and visitors.