Most of these early photos of the Urban Renewal Program's "walking mall" and adjacent areas were taken in the mid-1970s by Virgie Millegan Baird (1921-1999); photos by other contributors are so noted.

Many Helenans who are old enough to remember downtown when an actual street ran through it still resent the mall and the destruction of landmark buildings that took place.

Prominent here is the J. M. McDonald Company, a Nebraska-based chain department store which operated in Helena in the 60s-70s. In this photo, the "modern" gray aluminum paneling that McDonald's placed over the original building façade has been removed. This 1929 building originally housed Fligelman's department store, where noted Helena artist Robert Morgan once dressed the display windows.

On the right-hand side of the photo is Eaton-Turner Jewelry, which for many years featured in its window a series of the delightful Baranger Motions mechanized animated advertising displays.

The TraveLodge Hotel, also seen in the above photo, has changed ownership several times, operating as the Holiday Inn Downtown, then as the Park Plaza Hotel. It was renovated in 2000, but as of August 2006 the hotel's nightclub was shuttered and the future of the enterprise was uncertain.

The white two-story building sandwiched between the Novelty and Boston Blocks was Dorothy's Rooms, for many years a popular bordello. Dorothy Jospehine Baker took over the 19-1/2 South Main location in the mid-1950s from Ida Levy, who had operated there for decades.

Levy, probably a native of New Jersey, was busted by G-Men for alcohol violations during Prohibition (1920-1933), but stayed in business. Baker took over around 1955, and through the years garnered public praise for the cleanliness and honesty of her operation.

The following photos of the interior of "Big Dorothy's" are from the collection of Wally Peel, who took them after the death of Dorothy Baker in 1973, just prior to the public auction of her belongings.

As Wally tells it...

" When Big Dorothy passed away in 1973, her family decided to auction her belongings off. My friend Jack Hargrove was hired to do the job. One evening he and I went up there to see all the items he would be selling. I brought a camera and took some photos. I would not claim that these are the only pictures ever taken there, but I would venture to say they are at the very least quite rare. These are interior photos of her establishment exactly as it was when they closed her down."

"Thank goodness walls can't talk. But they do speak, in these wonderful photos, since Dorothy had a gift for a certain mobile home motif of interior decorating that created the feeling of wandering through the prop rooms in the Old Brewery Theater.

"The place was a maze of cheap furniture, space-age lamps, wall paper with sprinkles, gilded mirrors in unusual locations, and, of course, the slightly "off" ladies, who scampered about on high-heeled slippers with pompoms on the toes. The round bed looks all too familiar, in a deeply burning kind of way. But those rooms were a local boy's rite of passage, at least for those of us who did not stay home Friday nights to practice the bassoon.

"The experience was a tad expensive if a lad was stacking hay at a nickle a bale, but we paid up and blessed Dorothy in our most secret hearts for what love she had to offer."

Ralph Beer