Julian Anderson: The Montana Club’s Collector of Craft
Bartenders tend to be collectors. They gather people around them, accrue anecdotes and one-liners, file gossip and hearsay for future reference. Bartenders maintain the lost and found and save the lost who’ve found their way here. They preside over inventory and customers—emptying bottles, filling up patrons. They keep the bar and keep the peace.
So much of a bar’s presence depends on who’s standing behind it. And at the historic Montana Club in downtown Helena, that can only mean Julian Anderson. For six decades, he presided over bars in the elegant reading room and the rathskeller, the club’s speakeasyish basement watering hole, and in doing so, became as much a fixture there as its upper-crust membership. “When people mention the Montana Club,” says the establishment’s COO and historian Patty Dean, “If any name comes up, it’s Julian’s.”
And that’s no small matter, given Julian Anderson’s beginnings. Born to enslaved parents in Virginia sometime around 1860, Julian came west among a wave of Americans looking for new opportunities. In Helena, he worked stints at the Merchant’s and Broadwater hotels before coming to the Montana Club around 1893. Anderson’s reputation for crafting superb cocktails soon earned him a loyal following among the club’s membership and guests. Of particular note was his take on the mint julep, which in addition to bourbon contained brandy and rum. Garnished with orange, cherry, powdered sugar and lots of mint from Anderson’s own garden, the drink as he prepared it would continue to be served at the club even after his death.
The drinks which Anderson refined and served at the Montana Club would soon be collected into a small, 20-page volume titled Julian’s Recipes. The mint julep is there, of course (though spelled “julip”). The book also contains a recipe for the “Dai-qui-ri Cocktail;” a drink which looks suspiciously like a black and tan (ale with porter floated on top) but called the “Arf and Arf;” the Montana Club Cocktail, a gin martini but with the subtle tweak of a dash of orange bitters; and, of course, oyster cocktails—essentially oysters and cocktail sauce. Julian’s creations went beyond merely following a tried-and-true formula; he was creating new drinks and improving on old ones, bringing the preferences, tastes and influences from his own experience and putting them in front of a clearly appreciative audience. In the process, he was doing much more than slaking his customers’ thirsts; he was also educating their palates. Even the mint used in his signature juleps was said to have been brought to Montana in cuttings from his family’s home in Virginia. This approach anticipated the craft cocktail revival of the late 20th century by 70 years or more.
Upon its publication in May of 1919, Julian’s Recipes was just the second book of cocktails to be published by an African American. It would have been a point of pride for the club, enhancing its status and that of Helena as a cosmopolitan city standing shoulder to shoulder with those on the East Coast. It’s also an important document of culinary and societal culture, providing a vital snapshot of the prevalent tastes and trends of its time. Anderson’s is one of the earliest printed recipes for the daiquiri, for example, and underlines his command of the craft as well as early Montana’s sophistication.
But accolades for the book would be dampened by two subsequent events. The first occurred on Sept. 10, 1920, when an unknown assailant ambushed and shot Anderson near his home. Though gravely wounded, Anderson would survive and make a full recovery. The Montana Club promptly posted a $500 reward (about $7,000 today) for information leading to the arrest of the culprit, “to be paid upon conviction and final judgment in the case.” The assailant was never caught and the reward never paid.
The second hurdle in Anderson’s career was that Prohibition had been ratified in the same year that his book was published and in fact, had already taken effect in Montana. Not coincidentally, his job description had abruptly been modified to “elevator operator” at that same time; the only thing Anderson appears to have ferried between floors was members’ illicit stores of booze from their hidden basement lockers. At some point in the ensuing years, this arrangement evidently put the club’s Board of Governors in an awkward spot, as they mounted an attempt to oust Anderson from their employ. Citing its “definite program of economy” designed to reduce expenses, the board issued a 1927 memorandum which bemoaned, “there is no position which Julian Anderson can fill of value to the general membership of the Club.” The general membership of the Club, however, met this news with dignified outrage, and two days later the board reversed course. Julian remained on staff.
Overcoming these setbacks, Julian Anderson remained employed at the Montana Club throughout Prohibition and officially returned to his station behind the bar upon its repeal. But he and the club had already weathered an earlier crisis and survived. In April 1903, the club caught fire and burned to the ground, leaving only the Gothic outer walls temporarily standing. It was soon discovered that the fire had been started on the top floor by Julian’s 14-year-old son. The loss was devastating to the club and of course to Julian personally. But both would recover. The membership immediately scrambled to raise funds for rebuilding and, perhaps more significantly, did not hold Julian responsible.
The club took events in stride, even holding a New Year’s Eve “smoker” heralded by a cartoon announcement that the group was “slightly disfigured, but still in the ring,” and as a grace note “still smoking.” Blueprints for a new club to be erected on the same footprint were drafted by noted architect Cass Gilbert, who would go on to design not only the nearby Metals Bank in Butte, but also New York City’s Woolworth Building (then the world’s tallest) and his final commission, the design for the U.S. Supreme Court. The new structure scrapped most of the Gothic trappings of the original in favor of an American Renaissance approach, mating Romanesque arches to a restrained brick façade capped by a jutting roofline. And, of course, the new club featured new bars.
Julian Anderson would go on to hold court at those bars across a 60-year career spanning the aforementioned catastrophes, a pair of world wars and a substantial sweep of Montana’s early 20th-century history. In that time, he served luminaries such as Mark Twain and President Theodore Roosevelt alongside the wealthiest movers and shakers in Montana, and was a man held in esteem by the Helena community. In 1938, the club threw a party to commemorate Julian’s 45th year of service and would do so every five years thereafter until his retirement in 1953. One more celebration was held in 1960, on the occasion of Julian’s 100th birthday, at which he was presented a punchbowl filled with a hundred silver dollars.
Julian Anderson would pass away two years later at the (presumed) age of 102. He lies at Forestvale Cemetery, along with many of those he served and worked alongside, beneath a simple marker bearing his name, dates and a single word: “Father.” But his legacy is rich, and his collections of cocktails and customers helped found a culture we still celebrate today. The Montana Club is no longer private; its elegant dining room and cozy rathskeller welcome one and all for food, music and fine drinks. In 1919, Julian graced the cover of his book with a wistful subtitle: “In Remembrance of Olden Times.” It might be a fitting and fuller epitaph, if only we weren’t still able to pass through the doors of the club he helped build, belly up to the bar and order a refined sip drawn from the pages of the master of mixers.
Care to mix up one of Julian’s creations? His book can be read in full here:
https://art.mt.gov/pdfs/juliansrecipes.pdf
Tags: Montana Art News, Food, African-American, Helena, Montana history and Drink