Kluge House, Historic wooden house in Helena, Montana

The Kluge House is a wooden residential structure from Montana's early settlement period located in Helena, with two distinct levels built using different techniques. The lower floor features hand-hewn squared logs, while the upper floor uses half-timber walls filled with bricks.

Emil Kluge, born in Prussia in 1845 and wounded in the Franco-Prussian War, reached Helena on May 3, 1873, and moved his family into an abandoned miner's cabin. He added the half-timbered second floor in 1882 after reworking the hewn-log ground floor. In 1964 the house was nearly demolished as a fire hazard.

Emil Kluge, a Prussian immigrant who arrived in Helena in 1873, gave the house its name; locals also call it Maverick House. The upper storey, added in 1882, is half-timber filled with brick, with diagonal logs bracing the framing. The ground floor keeps hewn squared logs from the abandoned miner's cabin the family moved into.

The house is modestly sized, so take time to observe the different construction techniques used on each level. Note the exterior staircase that provides the only access to the upper floor, a feature that requires stepping outside the structure.

The interior contains a trapdoor in one of the smaller ground-floor rooms that leads down to a cellar space, a practical detail from the settlement era. This hidden access reveals how early dwellers made use of every bit of available space.