HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
A 1901 former church and library, now a theater associated with a Tiffany-window memorial
325 N Park Ave, Helena, MT 59601
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Ticket prices vary by production. Box office at (406) 447-1574, Mon-Fri 12-5pm; online ticketing available.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic theater in downtown Helena; sloped seating
Equipment
No Photos
Est. 1901 · 1901 Unitarian church building · Helena Public Library 1933-1976 · Louis Comfort Tiffany memorial window
The granite Romanesque building at 325 North Park Avenue opened in 1901 as a Unitarian church in Helena. With its arched form and sloped interior, it later proved well suited to other uses. From 1933 until 1976 it housed the Helena Public Library.
Grandstreet Theatre, a community theater founded in the mid-1970s, was invited into the building in 1976 and has operated there since, staging plays, musicals, and youth productions for Montana's capital city.
The building's most notable artifact is a memorial window crafted by Louis Comfort Tiffany. It was commissioned by the congregation in memory of Clara Bicknell Hodgin, who arrived in Helena in 1903 as the wife of the Unitarian minister, Reverend Stanton Hodgin. A former kindergarten teacher, Clara taught Sunday school and was well regarded by her students. She died of cancer in 1905. The Tiffany window was stored during the building's library years and reinstalled when Grandstreet Theatre moved in, where it remains a centerpiece of the space and of the theater's lore.
Sources
Grandstreet Theatre's resident story belongs to Clara Bicknell Hodgin, the minister's wife and Sunday-school teacher memorialized in the building's Tiffany window. After her death from cancer in 1905, and especially after the window was reinstalled when the theater took over the building, staff and performers began attributing unexplained events to her.
The most common reports are practical and gentle: lights and equipment turning on by themselves, and what people describe as an electric energy in the building. Some actors and patrons say they have felt a presence during performances. The signature detail involves the memorial window itself. Observers have reported that Clara's name, inscribed across the bottom of the glass, sometimes appears smudged or illegible, as if a child's hand had passed across it, a touch local accounts connect to the children Clara taught.
Grandstreet Theatre is included in regional surveys of haunted Montana places and is a stop on Helena ghost-tour itineraries. The theater treats the story as part of its history rather than a marketed attraction, and the documented record, Clara's life, her death, and the Tiffany window commissioned in her memory, gives the legend an unusually well-grounded core.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
See a play or musical in a 1901 stone building originally built as a Unitarian church and later Helena's public library. The theater is associated with the long-running story of Clara Bicknell Hodgin and her memorial Tiffany window. Buy tickets online or by phone.
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