By Paul F. Vang
It' a neighborhood bar that, on the surface, seems to be lacking something: a neighborhood.
Yet, with the whimsical name of "Helsinki Yacht Club," it' a bar that' reclaiming a neighborhood' heritage.
The neighborhood was once part of a bustling area on the East Side of Butte, with distinct enclaves of the many nationalities of people who, over a century ago, came from around the world to work in the mines and smelters of Butte.
Finntown was one of those East Side neighborhoods, an area full of bars, rooming houses and boarding houses, and with a constant stream of workers going to work or coming off their shifts in nearby mines.
At its peak, according to an historical information sheet from the Helsinki, Finntown had 12 bars, six grocery stores, 12 large boarding houses and many smaller ones, a score of rooming houses, a tailor, a shoemaker, a baker, and two steam bath houses.
In the 1890s, a boarding house was erected at 402 E. Broadway. Over succeeding years a number of different owners operated the business, which by 1915 advertised a feature essential for Finnish immigrants: saunas, or Finnish steam baths.
In 1937, John Niemi began a "beer parlor' at 402 E. Broadway. Called the Corner Bar, it joined other bars including the Broadway Bar, the Alaska Bar, the Alley Bar, the Yellowstone, and one lone grocery store, Midway Foods--all on the same 400 block of East Broadway, the heart of the Finntown neighborhood.
After several later changes in ownership, Iver and Ervin Niemi purchased the Corner Bar, or the New Corner Bar as they named it, and later changed its name to the Helsinki Bar and Steam Bath.
In the 1950s, the Anaconda Company started acquiring property in East Butte as the company began converting the Butte Hill mining operations from underground mining to the vast open pit mine that became known as the Berkeley Pit.
As the Company acquired land it razed the buildings, and historic neighborhoods such as Meaderville (Ialian) and Finntown gave way to the dragline and open pit. Erv Niemi was one of the few holdouts who refused to sell out to the Company, even as the neighborhood that it once anchored mostly disappeared.
While Finntown, as a distinct neighborhood, disappeared as its residents either scattered to other parts of the city or left the Butte area, the Helsinki Bar and Sauna continued as a landmark bar and just about the last vestige of Finntown.
Like the fictional Scottish Highlands town of Brigadoon, Finntown came back to life every year during St. Urho' Day, an event actually invented in the 1950s by Minnesotans of Finnish descent, commemorating a mythical St. Urho, who supposedly saved the Finnish wine crop by driving out the grasshoppers. Just coincidentally, St. Urho' Day is celebrated on March 16, on the eve of St. Patrick' Day.
It' a celebration that has spread to Finnish communities across the country, and even back to modern Finland itself.
The Helsinki Bar was the center of Butte' raucous St. Urho' Day celebration, until the late 1990s, when Erv Niemi retired, and after leasing the business for several years, finally closed it.
Finntown had finally died, some 20 years after the Anaconda Company, itself, limped to its demise and subsequent purchase by the Atlantic Richfield Company.
Local St. Urho' Day celebrations continued, of course, at a different bar on the Butte Hill, but the Helsinki Bar' doors stayed closed.
It took a team of two women, Kathy Folio and Linda Quakenbush, to reopen the doors of the Helsinki.
Ms. Folio purchased the property and Linda Quakenbush, who owned a liquor license at another property, owns and operates the actual business, re-dubbed the Helsinki Yacht Club, for its proximity to the huge body of water that inundated much of the old Berkeley Pit.
Ms. Quakenbush (she' Linda after you've known her for 30 seconds) explains that she had just a five-year lease on the Scoop Bar, her previous Butte business location, and explains that Kathy Folio purchased the property "because she didn't want to see the last piece of Finntown taken over by an out-of-stater."
Linda describes her building' owner, Folio, as "a good Italian-Catholic--but when she' in Finntown, she' Finnish."
After being closed for over five years, the venerable building needed a lot of repairs, cleaning and refurbishing to bring it up to date.
"It was in pretty tough shape," according to Folio, who added in a phone interview, "but I hate to see anything with that much history go to waste."
This is when the women learned that even if the actual neighborhood had been torn up and scattered, it still existed in spirit, as, when work needed to be done, volunteers showed up to do it.
"We had a volunteer work crew here seven days a week," Linda said, adding, "Everybody who didn't need to be licensed came in and donated labor, and if they didn't know how to do the work they were cooking steaks and burgers."
The original bar and back bar at the old Helsinki needed to be replaced, as it had been sold and moved to the Montana Steakhouse in Wenatchee, Wash.
Fortunately, they found another bar and back bar at the Ponderosa, another historic bar on Butte' Harrison Avenue that had been gutted by fire a couple years earlier. 25 people showed up to move the bar, in several sections, from the old location to Finntown.
When talking about either the refurbishing of the building or moving the bar, Linda often smiles and adds, "It was a labor of love."
The newly christened Helsinki Yacht Club is a bright and clean facility, and the décor, Linda points out, is still a work in progress, as they locate and display historic photos of mines and miners, the Columbia Gardens, or, things of a nautical nature, to fit in with the yacht club theme.
A couple of recent acquisitions, not yet on display, are a shrimp net and a brass propeller from a boat. Linda says, "You aren't going to see much in the line of beer signs in here. Things have to fit in with the historic or yacht club theme."
The "Stockholder' List" is a unique piece of memorabilia that, after framing, will adorn the bar' walls. It' a list, created back in the 1960s, of some 470 people, the majority with Finnish surnames, who were considered regular customers of the old Helsinki. Wall space is also reserved for a future display of the flags of the U.S., Montana and Finland.
Linda Quakenbush has deep Montana roots in the Jackson area of the upper Big Hole valley of southwest Montana. She grew up in Butte and had some of her first work experiences at the Finlen Hotel, the Ponderosa (the same bar where the bar and back bar came from), and Mel' Supper Club.
Then she left Butte for about 20 years, living in Texas and other locations across the country. "My ex-husband was a bricklayer and had jobs all across the country.
"The first chance I had, I came back. Now there' not enough dynamite on this Hill to get me out of Butte."
While the newly re-opened Helsinki has been in business just since September, Linda is proud of the sense of community and sharing among their regular customers.
"We collected six boxes of toys for Toys for Tots," she says, going on to add, "Plus we adopted 13 senior citizens at Christmas time. We also held a fundraiser for an Anaconda family that was dealing with cancer."
In what was clearly a proud achievement, Linda says, "We did a fundraiser to buy a car for a family that needed transportation for medical treatment in Missoula. We raised money for it; then I got a dealer to donate a used mini-van, so we gave the family both the car and the money."
"It' a good little neighborhood bar--even though there' no neighborhood," Linda says with a smile.
Linda says there' still work to be done on the building. She showed me the intricate wooden stairway that leads from a side door down two stories to ground level in the rear of the building. "We're going to add a deck here, so people can go out on summer evenings and have barbecues or watch the lights of the city from our perspective high on the Butte Hill."
That outdoor stairway leads down to the old addition to the original building that housed the sauna, though saunas are not part of the business plan. "It' not open," Linda says, "and won't be open--ever."
As for St. Urho' Day, as of the time of our interview in early January, Linda didn't know if this year' official celebration would be back at the Helsinki.
"That' up to the organizing committee from the Finnish community," she acknowledges, but it' clear that any grasshoppers that might show up at the Helsinki Yacht Club on March 16 will be in trouble, especially if they hear these dreaded words, chanted by a person wearing the official purple and Nile green robes of St. Urho:
"Heinäsirka, heinäsirka, mene täälta hiiteen!." (Roughly translated as, "Grasshopper, grasshopper, go to hell!")
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, March. 2007, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.