A young Irishman from Dublin is helping to restore the Dumas brothel in Butte, Montana. He is working on the project with former Beverly Hills call girl and Los Angeles policewoman, Norma Jean Almodovar, who now could be said to be the new "madame" of the Dumas which she is turning into the headquarters of the International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education, (ISWFACE, pronounced "ice face").
Donal Moylan, grandson of a former Fianna Fail Minister for Education, Sean Moylan, and an alumnus of Blackrock College, emigrated from an economically depressed Dublin in the 1980s and found similar conditions in Butte. Once called "the richest hill on earth" because of the mining boom years, Butte today is struggling to emerge from the depression brought on by closure of the huge ARCO copper mine in 1983.
This event coincided with the closure of the Dumas which had been built as a brothel in 1890 and has the record of being "America's longest running house of prostitution". Today, the red-brick Victorian building is on the National Register of Historic Places listed as a bordello.
As a unique museum, it has become a tourist attraction. The 43-room building has been preserved as it was when it closed its doors and Rudy Giecek, who in 1990 bought the Dumas from its last madame, Ruby Garett, to save it from demolition, gives graphic tours which are not for the prudish.
Norma Jean, as everyone calls her, read about the attempts to preserve the Dumas as a museum and after a visit decided to buy it from Mr Giecek and make it also the centre from where she runs ISWFACE. Donal Moylan, who runs a coffee bar called the Blue Venus on the edge of the old red light district, has been working with Norma Jean in raising funds to preserve the old building and also turn it into a "cultural centre" which will "educate the public about sex workers, their art, culture and history". He is happily married to a girl from Loughlinstown with two small children.
While the Butte Chamber of Commerce promotes the Dumas in its brochure as "part of the colourful past once in the heart of the `red light' district", not all the residents are happy about the arrival of Norma Jean. A group called Citizens to Protect our Youth fears "what this glamorisation of prostitution will do to the attitudes of our young people. They may say, `Let's give it a try"'.
But it was high school students which were responsible for the park behind the Dumas which through a series of silhouette figures commemorates the Butte red light district. It is as if there was now in Dublin a memorial park on the site of the Nighttown brothel area off Amiens Street frequented by James Joyce - thanks to the efforts of Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary, it was demolished in the 1920s.
In Butte, incidentally, a huge statue of Our Lady of the Rockies overlooks the closed-up mines and the cleaned-up red light district from a mountain 3,500 ft above the city. It is dedicated to women everywhere, especially to mothers.
Butte at one time was the most Irish city in America as thousands of immigrants flocked there hoping to make their fortune. It was said that most of the miners from the Allihies in West Cork could be found in Butte's Dublin Gulch.
They had a friend in "Copper King" Marcus Daly who emigrated from Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan, in 1856 when he was 15 and ended up as one of the wealthiest men in Montana if not in America as his Anaconda copper mine struck it rich. Daly strongly favoured Irish labour and a sign "No English need apply" was posted over his mines, the legend goes.
Eamon de Valera thought it worth his while to visit Butte twice on his fund-raising trips in the 1920s where he got enthusiastic receptions from the Irish miners. We can be fairly sure that he did not look for funds at the Irish World brothel as there would have been little spare cash to be had.
Charlie Chaplain spent time in Butte and greatly admired the girls of the night. In his autobiography, he writes that "Butte boasted of having the prettiest women of any red light district in the West and it was true. If one saw a pretty girl smartly dressed, one could rest assured she was from the red light quarter, doing her shopping."
Today, a visitor sees little shopping. Maybe it was a bad day, but on a recent visit, the historic quarter had the atmosphere of a ghost town even at midday. Donal Moylan and his friend Tom Wilde, who owns The Irish Times pub, also on the edge of the old red light district, are doing their best to liven things up.
The pub is appropriately in a building which used to house the Butte Daily Post. It was one of the locations for the Irish TV documentary, The Irish in America: Long Journey Home. The picture over the bar is claimed by Tom Wilde to be a "print of the first nude allowed by the Catholic Church in Ireland" because it is in soft focus. At least that it what he was told by the Dublin art gallery where he bought it, and he is sticking to the story.
And one of the bar counters comes from the now closed Montana Bar. "Bar historians tell us that at least two or three people have been killed while having a drink at the bar in its former location," says Mr Wilde.
Ah, the good old days in Butte.