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Manito Park - Picnic Shelter
The Downtown Spokane Rotary Club constructed this cooking shelter in November 1960. It enclosed 2000 square feet and provided table space for 100. It was built with five range units and a double sink. The architects were Henry Bertelsen, Eddy Carlson, and James Architects. The project cost about $16,000. Families, businesses, organizations and churches all hold special events in this shelter.
Picnics have always been a popular part of Manito Park. Picnics were most popular near the playgrounds and on the hillside near the 18th street entrance. People from all walks of life would spend time in the park with a picnic and their kids. A streetcar would bring early picnickers to 10th street and they would walk the rest of the way to Manito. Eventually a streetcar would drop a person off just outside the park. Charles A. Libby, famous Spokane photographer, took photographs of people picnicking in the park to help advertise the Davenport as a place to purchase a picnic lunch and take it to the park. Picnicking was used to help promote the Manito Park Addition as a place to move your family.
According to an ad in the Spokane Daily Chronicle, the presence of the park caused the property value to raise several times what it was actually worth. This limited the type of people who could afford to live around the park, but it did not limit the people who could visit the park. The land in front of the picnic shelter would be covered by water during different times of the year until the park installed a drainage system. If you walk up the stairs behind the shelter and walk that path to your left, as you face east you are looking at the sledding hill. Kids of all ages from the 1900s to present have enjoyed sledding that hill in the winter.
Picnics have always been a popular part of Manito Park. Picnics were most popular near the playgrounds and on the hillside near the 18th street entrance. People from all walks of life would spend time in the park with a picnic and their kids. A streetcar would bring early picnickers to 10th street and they would walk the rest of the way to Manito. Eventually a streetcar would drop a person off just outside the park. Charles A. Libby, famous Spokane photographer, took photographs of people picnicking in the park to help advertise the Davenport as a place to purchase a picnic lunch and take it to the park. Picnicking was used to help promote the Manito Park Addition as a place to move your family.
According to an ad in the Spokane Daily Chronicle, the presence of the park caused the property value to raise several times what it was actually worth. This limited the type of people who could afford to live around the park, but it did not limit the people who could visit the park. The land in front of the picnic shelter would be covered by water during different times of the year until the park installed a drainage system. If you walk up the stairs behind the shelter and walk that path to your left, as you face east you are looking at the sledding hill. Kids of all ages from the 1900s to present have enjoyed sledding that hill in the winter.
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