Think it's too early for Christmas? Then you're not hand-painting hundreds of hand-cut wooden ornaments in an effort to revive a decades-old holiday tradition for an entire community.
Raised in Frenchtown, Cyr fondly remembers childhood visits to the century-old schoolhouse on Remount Road, back when Les and Hanneke Ippisch opened their one-of-a-kind Christmas Market each holiday season and drew crowds of thousands.
But he hardly expected that, as an adult, he would be drawn back.
He's been living in Los Angeles, working as an interior designer for the past 23 years. Last year, his parents just happened to mention, in an offhand way, that the schoolhouse was up for sale.
His curiosity piqued, Cyr asked his parents to hunt down the phone number of the broker who was looking after the property. He thought no more about it until months later, when he got a call from a real estate agent saying the schoolhouse was, indeed, for sale.
Cyr dropped everything and bought the 1 1/2-acre Ninemile property for a little more than $400,000. He moved in immediately.
“Then I started thinking, ‘Hmm, what am I going to do with this place now that I've got it?' ” he recalled.
He looked at the purchase as both an opportunity to put his skills as an interior designer to the test and as an adventure, the chance to do something completely new. Well, new to him.
The schoolhouse and teacherage was built at the turn of the 20th century by the Anaconda Co. for the children of its loggers. Eventually it became a community center and dance hall called Club 36. Then, it was abandoned - until the mid-1970s, when Hanneke and Les Ippisch bought the property.
They transformed the old building significantly. In fact, they picked the schoolhouse up by its very foundation, turned it to face the road, and set it down on a newly built basement.
The Ippisches dabbled in designing and crafting wooden figures and ornaments, drawing inspiration from their travels around the world. They opened the little Christmas store on a whim, really, but as the years went by it grew and grew.
For 30 years, the Ippisches kept the tradition alive. Finally, following the 2002 Christmas season, they shuttered the store's doors and moved to their home on Flathead Lake for some well-deserved rest. They continued to dabble, and even opened another little shop in Big Arm, at 208 Skipping Rock Lane.
For all those years, they worked together on their creations; Les did the carpentry work and Hanneke the painting. But these days Hanneke is doing it all on her own. Les died shortly after Thanksgiving last year.
Hanneke, a published writer and nationally requested speaker, now divides her time between writing, traveling the country and making “little things” for the shop.
The Ippisches had hoped, when they put the schoolhouse up for sale, that it would go to someone who would love it as they have - and it did, Hanneke said.
“I think it's great, I'm very enthused,” she said. “After 30 years, it needs to be freshened up again, and that's exactly what (Cyr) is doing. And he's doing a wonderful, wonderful job.”
For help determining the schoolhouse's future, Cyr looked to the past. The Ippisches had created something that people loved, he said. He wanted to revive that tradition, and at the same time make it his own.
He started pulling carpets and refinishing the buildings' original maple floors. He had the exterior of the buildings repainted in their “signature” maize - a cheerful color he uses throughout the property and calls “Schoolhouse Yellow.”
“We wanted to maintain sort of the sparky charm,” he said. “We want people to come here and say “Oh, it's just how I remember it.' ”
It's a spry old house, though it's approaching 100 years old, Cyr said. It doesn't creak or moan, as old houses usually do. It has a childlike spirit.
Cyr has made his home in the schoolhouse proper, which also houses his painting studio. The teacherage - another building on the property that, long ago, used to be dorms for the school's teachers - has become a bed-and-breakfast once again.
Cyr has left the four rooms in the teacherage much as they were when the Ippisches set them up. The Montana Room is still wallpapered with old U.S. Forest Service maps. Wooden clogs hang on the walls of the Dutch Room. There are still two shared bathrooms, a central living room and kitchen, and no TV.
“You're forced to interact here,” Cyr said, smiling.
The single-bed Dutch Room goes for $75 a night, the double-bed Amish and Montana rooms for $80 and the Swedish for $85. All come with plush feather beds and down comforters.
“They're like sleeping on clouds,” Cyr said.
He reopened the bed-and-breakfast portion of the teacherage six weeks ago and so far has hosted three sets of guests and a family reunion that filled the whole schoolhouse.
The schoolhouse, the teacherage, the Christmas Store and the Children's Store - “Not for grown-ups” cautions a sign on the building - surround the European-style central courtyard, where resident artisan Sue Matthews will serve espresso to those who request it.
An addition to the teacherage is now Matthews' weaving studio, where she also gives classes. She even displays the socks her business partner, Sharon Hamilton, makes on an antique knitting machine.
Before she met Cyr, Matthews planned to open a store by the Nine Mile House on the corner of Nine Mile and Remount roads. When that deal fell through, she was “pretty distraught,” she said, until a friend - and relative of Cyr's - told her to call him.
Now, she's raising five sheep and three goats on the property, turning their weavings into blankets and scarves. She's also raising beds and beds of marigolds, which will be made into dye.
“It's magic,” Matthews said of the schoolhouse.
Meanwhile, Cyr spends his time working on the house, running the bed-and-breakfast and setting up the Christmas Market business - “all the while painting, painting, painting,” he said.
Just as the Ippisches did, Cyr is designing all the ornaments and holiday scenes himself.
“It's in the spirit of Hanneke and Les, but it will be different,” he explained.
He draws much of his inspiration from his surroundings. A robin nesting four eggs outside his studio window inspired one ornament. He's even making napkins, tablecloths and the like out of fabric he designed after he was inspired by the birch trees in the front yard.
“I find connections in the oddest things,” he said.
The Ippisches were perhaps best-known for their Nativity scenes, and so Cyr designed five different scenes in his own style.
“I want to create a vignette, a moment of time you stumble into,” he said. There's also, as in the Ippisches' scenes, some humor. “I've been having a lot of fun with them, but because I'm a designer I go about it very particularly.”
He points out, for example, that two of the characters in one scene are wearing the colors of the Scandinavian and Norwegian flags. Talk about attention to detail.
A few weeks ago Cyr was stopped on the street by one of the Ippisches' former painters, and now the four painters who used to help the Ippisches are helping him.
So the Christmas Market this year truly will be a mix of the traditional and the new.
He admits he has no idea what to expect when he opens the heavy iron gates in November. Will there be 10 customers, or will there be thousands?
Indications are toward the latter.
“When we had our last Christmas market, in the three days before Thanksgiving - well, guess how many people showed up?” Hanneke Ippisch said.
“There were 12,500 people,” she said. “It was so, so wonderful.”
In fact, they very nearly sold out.
She fully expects, she said, that Cyr will see the same crowd.
Find out more
The Nine Mile Schoolhouse Bed-and-Breakfast is up and running at 18815 Remount Road, and the Christmas Market will open in November for the holiday season. Call owner and proprietor Kurt Cyr at (406) 626-5499 for more information or check out the Web site at http://www.9mileschoolhouse.com.
Reporter Tyler Christensen can be reached at 523-5215 or at tyler.christensen@lee.net.
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