Looking Back: Recalling the "Pink Apartments" in Chinook

Reporter's note: Locals of a certain age will likely recall the "Pink Apartments" in downtown Chinook on the corner across the street from the Motor Inn and adjacent to Dan's NAPA. The apartments were torn down, along with Dr. Hoon's office and residence, in September, 1987 and the three town lots became the present Centennial Park. The park commemorates the centennial of the town of Chinook as well as Montana, both founded in 1889.

Mid-January of this year the Sweet Nursing Home received an email from Elmer E. McDowell, Jr. McDowell, no relation to the former Undersheriff, lives in Birch Tree, Missouri, a small town in the Ozarks. He wrote he was nearing 78 years of age, in declining health and had a lot of questions about the town where he was born.

This is part of what he wrote in his email: " I am seeking information and hopefully some of your residents staying there (at the Sweet Home) will be able to know the answers or know where this info can be obtained.... I was born March 29, 1940 in the 'Tom Field' apartments which I understand were torn down and its location is now the city park. Are there pictures of that building in someone's old photo album? Would my birth be noted in the local newspaper?"

McDowell went on to give a short summary of his time in Chinook and his adult years. His parents, including four children, left Chinook after about one year and moved to St. Louis. He served in the army from 1957 to 1979, then became a police officer in Conway, South Carolina from 1979 to 1995. He concluded the email, "I would love for someone to research the past and enlighten me."

Knowing of my interest in local history, an employee at the Sweet Nursing Home sent the email to me. I found a reference in a 1940 issue of the "Chinook Opinion" reading a "baby boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. A. C. McDowell" and I emailed a copy of the birth notice to Elmer McDowell. Just recently I had a phone conversation with Mr. McDowell and he is excited to learn more about the place where he was born.

McDowell's inquiry set me to wondering about the history of the pink apartments. What I found was a lot of "I think this was the case" but not a lot of concrete information. Here's a bit of what I was able to gather about the original Pine Apartments which later became the Tom Fields Apartments and, in more modern times, were known as the pink apartments.

The Hiles property at 200 Indiana became the Pine Apartments

In the 1989 book prepared for Chinook's centennial, there is a picture of the Hile house located at 200 Indiana (now the location of Centennial Park). The identification for the photo reads in part, "Hiles was the manager of the dry goods department in Bogy's Mercantile. It was later the site location of the Songer Bulding and the Pine Apartments." Tax records indicate the apartment building was erected in 1912. Hoon's office, which was on the south end of the property and was set back a ways from the street, was noted in the tax rolls as "very old" but no date of construction was listed.

O.P. Songer: homesteader, car dealer and rooming house operator

O.P. (Ora Parker) Songer, originally from the Midwest, homesteaded 320 acres in the north part of Blaine County and received a patent in 1916. Beginning in 1919 he also had the agency for Racine Tires in the area. Racine was one of the earliest manufacturers and wholesalers of vehicle tires.

In 1922 Songer purchased the property at 200 Indiana, which already had some apartments on the property. (I could never really determine on what timeline the property was developed...if all the apartments were built at once or were added in stages). In a "Chinook Opinion" story the same year, Songer said he was planning to build a 50 by 60 foot garage on the property facing Indiana Street and there would also be a "filling station of the latest type."

There's no indication either the garage or the filling station was ever built. In another local news story published in 1931, it was noted that Frank Bagan was the new manager of the Chinook Lumber Company. Further, the story read, "O.P. Songer is working in the yard as his assistant." It appears there was some sort of decline in Songer's fortunes.

When Songer's wife died in 1940, the "Chinook Opinion" reported, "Mr. Songer was employed as an auto dealer and for the past 15 years operator of a rooming house." The 15 years would be about the length of time he had owned the apartment house since buying it around 1922. About the time Songer's wife died the apartments became known as the Fields Apartments and a renter at that time said, "We paid our rent to Marion Fields who also lived in an apartment in the building." Songer remarried and subsequently died in 1949.

The comment about the "auto dealer" employment for Songer is a bit of a mystery. Don Berger, who went to work for Doughten Ford in 1956 said, "people at the dealership told me there used to be a garage under the apartment building." Larry Wisch, another of my local history consultants, said, "I've heard someone built a garage under the apartments using a slip and a team (a slip is an old excavating and earth moving tool pulled by horses).

More recently I spoke with John Pike who razed the apartment building in 1987. Asked about a garage under the apartments, he said, "When we tore the building down there was no evidence of a garage, but there was room underneath to have one." He added he had heard the garage was used by bootleggers during Prohibition (1920-1933). I never could find verifiable information about the existence of the garage or the bootlegger story, but the stories do add to the intrigue of the building.

Life in the Pine/Fields/pink apartments

Property tax records at the courthouse listed 19 apartments on the first floor and five on the second floor of the apartment building. The foundation was described as concrete with an earth basement. The structure had plastered walls and steam heat, the exterior was a stucco material. The facility had six bathrooms, 24 sinks and one 'water closet.' On the front of the building, facing Indiana, there was an overhanging canopy. Several people mentioned Hart's Barber Shop in the front of the building and a small bakery in a back section of the building.

Lois and Dale Butcher, newlyweds in the fall of 1940, lived in what was then called the Fields Apartments (same year McDowell's family was there but neither family recalls the other). Lois said, "At first we had a one room apartment on the bottom floor. As I recall there was a sink, for washing dishes, and we shared a bathroom between our apartment and another. I remember you had better check the doors when you used the bathroom." Later the couple moved to a two room apartment. Lois said, "I think we had a sink in both rooms but am not sure if we had to share a toilet or not."

One thing she vividly recalled was the bath tub. She explained, "To use the bath tub, shared by a whole bunch of people, we had to go outside onto the sidewalk along 2nd Street and then enter a hallway that led to the room with the tub." She laughed and said, "that might sound primitive nowadays but after living on a farm with only an outhouse, an indoor toilet and even a shared tub was a real luxury." She also remembered having her husband build a cover over the steam radiator so she had a shelf for plants.

The city of Chinook purchased the properties and Centennial Park was created

Sometime in the mid-1980's the city of Chinook received a Community Block Grant to buy the property and raze the old building. Several people noted that by the mid-1980's the buildings at the site were declining. Dan Friede, who was fire chief at the time, told, "We would fill the old building with smoke and practice using our air tanks and doing rescue operations." Other's noted the apartment building was in bad shape.

A Community Development Committee, made up of locals, was created to advise the city council how the property might be used. A bit of a schism developed as some on the city council and the advisory committee quarreled over a proposal to build a centennial park. The committee raised outside money for landscaping and the materials to build the gazebo that still stands. Eventually the park was approved and Centennial Park was built on the corner. And the pink apartments were no more.

Reporter's closing request: One thing I could never find was a photo showing the front of the old pink apartments, especially one that included Dr. Hoon's office. If any readers have access to such a photo, I would really like to make a copy of it and run the picture later as a follow-up to this story. Leave a message at 357-3573 (the "Blaine County Journal") and I'll get back with you.