The Historic Sears Building is located in the Butte-Anaconda National Historic Landmark District, the nation’s largest historic district.  W.A. O’Brien, a local Butte architect who also designed the Leonard Hotel, the Napton Apartments and the Ansonia, designed the Historic Sears Building, which was originally constructed in the early 1900s as an annex to the Hennessey store building located immediately to its the west, with miners apartments on the upper floors.
 
In 1941, Sears, Roebuck and Company opened a its first retail store in Butte on the first floor, where it stayed until the mid-1970s.  Subsequently the owners of the Historic Sears Building defaulted on their property taxes and the building reverted to the City of Butte.  Serious consideration was given to demolishing the building, but in the early 1990s, as a result of the work of the Butte Silver Bow local historic preservation office and the Urban Revitalization Agency, the building was sealed and stabilized, its future to be determined. 
 
In 2006 the City of Butte, as seller, and Sears Building Owner LLC, as purchaser, executed a binding option agreement for the purchase of the Historic Sears Building, and since then, our team has worked tirelessly to convert this historic, but neglected and vacant five-story brick building into a vibrant mixed-use building which will serve as a northeast anchor to Uptown Butte’s burgeoning arts and cultural district.