Regis Grocery in Red Lodge, Listed!

Pictured (top) Regis Grocery storefront (now a café), 2024. (left) Joe and Viola Regis inside the store in 1971. (right) Joe and Viola Regis in front of the new building in 1942.

Montana has many special places for which to be thankful. Let’s hear it for corner grocery stores! 

Despite their easy walkability and importance to small communities, the once ubiquitous corner grocery store is a vanishing resource in the neighborhood landscape. Regis Grocery of Red Lodge, a classic representation of a bygone cultural phenomenon, was added last week to the National Register of Historic Places.

Small and unpretentious, corner groceries don’t get as much attention as larger commercial buildings along main streets. Yet, the corner grocery serves as a social hub where people connect with their neighbors.

For 57 years, Joe Regis and his wife Viola nurtured this sense of community in how they operated their corner grocery store in an ethnically diverse neighborhood of southwest Red Lodge. The son of Italian immigrants, Joe grew up working at his father’s grocery prior to acquiring the business. Joe replaced the original store with a Streamline Moderne building and reopened the corner grocery in 1942. The couple honored the neighborhood’s ethnic diversity by providing a welcoming environment to all, along with goods and services to accommodate a variety of needs and cultures.

After Joe’s death in 1989, Viola continued to operate the grocery until her passing in 1999. A group of local women purchased and renovated the property as a café and community center, opening the Regis Café in 2001. The current owners pride themselves on continuing to serve the community and retaining the property as an integral piece of Red Lodge’s historic fabric.

Explore this and other Montana places that are listed in the National Register of Historic Places:

Interactive NR Map: https://mhs.mt.gov/Shpo/NationalReg/NRMap

Pictured (top) Regis Grocery storefront (now a café) in 2024; (left) Joe and Viola Regis inside the store in 1971; (right) Joe and Viola Regis in front of the new building in 1942.

#mthist #mtshpo #nationalregisternps

Listed 10/28/2024