The Spanish Mission style peaked in popularity in 1915, when the Panama California Exposition carried its influence well beyond its Southwestern origins. Because the style was so instantly recognizable, small-town leaders used it to signal that their communities were forward-thinking and worldly.

It's no surprise, then, that Montana's leading architectural firm, Link and Haire, drew on hallmark Mission features—vivid terra-cotta accents, ornamental brickwork, and tall, contoured parapets—when they designed this three-story headquarters for the Rundle Title and Abstract Company. Sidney Rundle, the firm's principal and a land locator, was among Glasgow's most enthusiastic promoters, with his own financial success closely linked to the region's success in drawing in homesteaders.

The building he commissioned quickly became a hub of both business and leisure in Glasgow. Down in the basement, visitors could find a billiards room, a bowling alley, and a barber shop with five chairs, plus a Turkish steam cabinet and two showers for freshening up before an evening out. The ground floor held ten shops, each equipped with modern display cases said to rival those "in the largest cities" and lit throughout by electric lighting that reached "every nook and corner."

The second floor contained offices, a fireproof vault for the abstract company, and meeting rooms reserved for local businessmen. Crowning the structure was a forty-room hotel, which was later remodeled into apartments.

After 1920, the Glasgow Courier set up shop in the building as well. For three decades, its celebrated editor, Sam Gilluly, worked from an office there, reporting on the construction of Fort Peck Dam and the emergence of Glasgow Air Base.