The opportunity to buy an entire home for just $10 has hit the market, but there’s one major problem.
Images show a majestic three-story home spanning more than 16,000 square feet.
Originally built in 1911, the original Spanish Mission-style building served the community as a functioning hospital for decades.
After World War II, the military dismantled it in 1947, while the listing specifies that for at least a brief period it served as “medical office space.”
A home in Fort Missoula, Montana, has hit the market for $10, with the important stipulation that buyers will have to relocate the building to a different parcel of land.
Originally known as Old Post Hospital, the structure served for decades as Fort Missoula’s primary medical center, including local military personnel and their families.
While the building is up for grabs for a staggering $10, that too-good-to-be-true price has one major downside.
The sale is for the building only – and not the land – and the sales contract stipulates that the new owners must remove the house from the lot.
As an added draw, the sellers have attached to the sale a $100,000 moving credit, specifically intended to help the buyer physically relocate the structure somewhere else, anywhere else.
“Seller will provide up to $100,000 (one hundred thousand dollars) of moving credit to help defer moving and transition costs,” the listing states.
The property in Fort Missoula, Montana, at 3255 Lt. Moss Road, once served the local military-centered community as Old Post Hospital.
As a military base, Fort Missoula was established by the United States Army in 1877, with the 25th Infantry Regiment stationed there beginning in 1888.
The road on which the hospital is located was apparently named for Lieutenant James Moss, an 1894 West Point graduate placed in command of the 25th Infantry Regiment in 1894.
Built in 1911, the hospital served the community during the Spanish flu and polio epidemics.
During World War II, the hospital also cared for Japanese and Italians imprisoned in a nearby internment camp.
Shortly after the end of World War II, the hospital ceased operations in 1947.
Stationed at Fort Missoula, Montana, in the 1890s, the 25th Infantry Regiment was an all-African American infantry that embarked on a series of exploratory bicycle expeditions.
Lieutenant Moss led the 24th Infantry, an all-African American troop known alternatively as the Buffalo Soldiers, on a series of long bicycle rides, including a 2,000-mile ride from Fort Missoula to St. Louis.
The objective of these missions was to verify the effectiveness of the bicycle as a means of land transportation instead of horses.
Despite Lieutenant Moss’s lofty ambitions for the bicycle as a tool for military operations, his superiors dissolved his efforts to promote bicycle operations in 1898, at the dawn of the Spanish-American War, in which the 25th Infantry was sent to Cuba.
Old Post Hospital was built just over a decade later and became the main medical facility used by the base’s military personnel and their families during the Spanish flu and polio epidemics.
In the 1940s, Fort Missoula was directly affected by the war, as it became the base for one of the internment camps housing Italian and Japanese residents.
Throughout its ordeal, the Old Post Hospital continued to care for populations interned in the camps, before closing two years after the war ended.
In 2008, the Old Post Hospital appeared on a list of Missoula’s “Eleven Most Endangered Historic Sites.” The article, from PreserveHistoricMissoula.org, reported thatAt the time, the property was owned and used by Western Montana Mental Health Center.
In 2019, the property housing the long-abandoned hospital was acquired by property developer FAE-Wolf.
Last year, in April 2023, FAE-Wolf’s Max Wolf wrote an opinion piece in the local newspaper The Missoulian calls for preservation of building.
Currently, the total cost of restoring the Old Post Hospital could be as high as $8 million.
The property was acquired by local developer FAE-Wolf in 2019, and owner Max Wolf initially planned to finance the necessary renovations by building new homes nearby.
However, FAE-Wolf’s proposal to restore the Old Post Hospital was rejected by the Missoula Historic Preservation Commission, and the vote was confirmed at city council in February 2024.
But before demolishing the old Old Post Hospital, FAE-Wolf decided to put it on the market for $10, with the condition that the buyer relocate it.
Wolf advocated for a plan that would establish new housing, along with some commercial space, on the five-acre property on which the original building stands, and that profits from the new development would fund the restoration of the Old Post Hospital.
The new development, he maintained, would be a “privately funded project on private land that we want to create as a community space for the public.”
He added that preservation purists who would like to see the hospital restored with grants alone had yet to come up with a viable plan to make that goal a reality.
Unfortunately, in February 2024, the proposal was rejected by the Missoula Historic Preservation Commission, with the city council upholding the vote 7-4.
In response to the city council vote, FAE-Wolf issued a statement that read in part: “It is with great regret that FAE-Wolf has been forced to prepare a demolition permit application with the city of Missoula to remove the former Post Office of the hospital.’
But, before committing the hospital to demolition, FAE-Wolf chose to put it on the market for $10, in a last attempt to save the structure, allocating the aforementioned $100,000 to help remove the building, according to the station. local. KPAX.
On the other side of the argument, a local agitating blogger accused Wolf of being a “cultural terrorist” for effectively holding the hospital “hostage,” and the ransom was approval of his company’s development proposal.
Which brings us to the current situation.
the list is held by David A. Lemm of Clearwater Properties. A 3-D tour of the property can be found. here.
