In 1909, the Wah Chong Tai Company retained George DeSnell, a Butte architect, to design a new building to adjoin the mercantile. The two-story brick structure has two storefronts at street level separated by an entrance to the second story Mai Wah (meaning “beautiful and luxurious”) Noodle Parlor.

At least one of the storefronts was divided from front to back into a series of small stores accessed off an interior side aisle — a small version of today’s shopping mall. An unusual feature of this building, but one that is common in Victoria, British Columbia’s Chinatown, is a “cheater story,” a floor sandwiched between the first and second stories. Divided into a number of small rooms and with only about six feet of headroom, it apparently accommodated lodgers.

By the mid-1940s, only a few Chinese families remained in Butte, among them the Chinn family who owned and lived in the Mai Wah Noodle Parlors and Wah Chong Tai Co. buildings. By 1949, William Chinn (left front in this photo), Albert Chinn’s son, owned the building. He rented the building to Paul Eno who ran a fix-it shop and second-hand store from the ground level until his death in 1986.

Hal Waldrup, a friend of Eno, recognized the historical significance of the buildings and was cruc ial in organizing citizens to help preserve and restore the buildings. Waldrup arranged for many Chinese artifacts and photographs from the building to be transferred to the Montana Historical Society in Helena.