Please be aware that this structure is located on private property and access is prohibited for safety reasons.

From the 1880s to the 1930s, the Northern Pacific Railway Depot in Cheney, WA was the railway division point between the mouth of the Columbia River and Spokane. While Cheney was not a particularly consequential freight terminal or point of debarkation, much of the freight headed to Spokane passed through the small city. The depot was also an important stop for routine maintenance and repair of engines and freight cars. This unique Great Northern Depot is a physical reminder of the importance of the railroad to the social and economic growth of Eastern Washington; the Cheney Depot in particular is a symbol of the city's rise from humble origins and to a heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus, the city's image is inextricably linked to the Depot, and long-term Cheney residents attach great importance to it. Furthermore, as perhaps the sole representative of a Spanish Eclectic-style railroad depot in the northwest, the Northern Pacific Depot is important to the cultural history of not just Cheney, but the Northwest.

The Depot is connected to important regional and national figures, none more closely than Clarence Martin, owner of the Cheney Grain and Milling Company in the 1920s and the most influential man in early twentieth-century Cheney, simultaneously city Mayor and state Governor from 1932-1936. By the 1920s, Martin wanted to attract more commerce to Cheney, but was embarrassed by the dilapidated old depot, built in 1881 when the rail initially came through. Martin, whose political and financial stars were on the rise, was one of the most influential people in the region, and after complaining about it to Northern Pacific officials, the company not only honored Martin's request for a new depot, but allowed him to choose the unusual design. Presumably, Martin selected the unconventional design to differentiate Cheney from the dozens of other small towns along the railroad line.

The new building opened in 1929, just in time to feel the Great Depression's impact on railway freight and transportation. As a result, Cheney's economy slumped and its population slipped into a decline that has continued over time. While it never again reached its Martin-era prosperity, Cheney continued to be a destination for young men and women enrolled at the state Normal School (which became Eastern Washington University), many of whom arrived by train. The city even hosted a visit from President Harry Truman in May, 1950. Traveling by train, Truman stopped at the Cheney Depot on his way from a visit to the Grand Coulee Dam to an engagement in Spokane.

Although small railway depots are ubiquitous in the Pacific Northwest, the Cheney Depot is distinguished by its Spanish Eclectic design featuring a stucco exterior, red tile roof, and distinctive arcaded outdoor waiting area, of which there are few examples outside the southwestern United States. The building is original. Burlington Northern has made no additions, and regular maintenance has left it well preserved. The windows and doors are also all original. Although a a thorough inspection of the interior has yet to be accomplished, it seems that it is structurally sound and comes with the original wainscoting, lighting, and moldings. Since the BNSF terminated passenger service in 1971, the company has used the Depot as extra office space and for storage. In 2013 BNSF announced their intent to demolish the structure, as the Depot's location raises significant liability concerns.

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Of the eighty-seven ghost signs in the greater Spokane area, ninety percent are within two blocks of Sprague Avenue (once known as U.S.10) and the Northern Pacific Railroad, in an area known as the Western Spokane Historic Transportation Corridor. Commissioned in 1926, U.S. 10 was one of the first major highways to cross the northwestern states. Affectionately referred to as the Sunset Highway, the road crossed the Sunset Highway Bridge before entering the west side of town. From there the highway ran east-west through the middle of the downtown area, always within sight of the railroad line. Before the construction of I-90, the modern six-lane freeway that crosses the state, the vast majority of people and products coming in and out of Spokane used one of these two routes.

Many of the biggest businesses in Spokane sprouted up along the corridor where they had easy access to the rail line, and as the city rapidly expanded between 1890 and 1920 these businesses attracted many itinerant workingmen. It is no surprise, then, that the bulk of Spokane's ghost signs are found within a block or two of the Transportation Corridor, or that they mostly advertise single resident occupancy hotels (SROs), tobacco, cigars, or staple food items like flour or oats. Moreover, before the advent of large-scale outdoor signage or neon, businesses along the corridor identified themselves by name and logo in high-contrast hues. It all amounted to a surprising tableau of color in the industrial heart of Spokane, perhaps the least likely place.

U.S. 10 was decommissioned as the major route from Seattle to Spokane in 1969. Many of the ghost signs once astride the Transportation Corridor have faded, and others have been obscured by subsequent building. Others, however, are still visible, drawing the viewer's attention to "Blair Business College," "the Frederick Hotel," or "Washington Cracker Company." While U.S. 10 and the Northern Pacific are not the arteries they once were, these remaining ghost signs are a reminder of the rough-and-tumble beginnings of Spokane.

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There is a striking ghost sign painted on the east side of the building at 27 West Main Street (now Harmon Autoglass) that suggests the rough-and-tumble character of the neighborhood in the 1910s when it was painted. It is an advertisement for Henry George Cigars, featuring Henry George, famous populist economist and author of Progress and Poverty, who was immensely popular with a working class increasingly resentful over the growing economic inequality in the last couple of decades of the nineteenth century. At just $.05 each Henry George Cigars were, appropriately, among the cheapest available. Hemenway & Moser, the Spokane distributor, sold them twenty-to-a-box for a dollar, making them probably the most popular brand amongst hard-bitten working men who frequented the rail yard. This Henry George advertisement was the newer of two in Spokane, but the other has since been painted over.

It is this working-class context that best characterizes Spokane in the early 1900s. Although it is tempting to tell the story of Spokane through the lives of early magnates like James Glover or Amsa B. Campbell, the men who really shaped the city were wage-earning stiffs with diverse backgrounds. Indeed, while European immigrant families were still living in fetid slums in the big eastern cities at the beginning of the twentieth century, a Jewish family from Eastern Europe made their way to Spokane and set up a business at 27 W. Main that would prosper for half a century.

Bernard and Eva Endelman were German Jews from Russia who arrived in Spokane between 1911 (when he entered the United States) and 1917, when he enlisted in the U.S Army in Spokane County during WWI and shipped out to Europe. They joined a thriving Jewish community that had begun to grow in the 1880s and although this later generation was less well-off than their merchant predecessors, they still found opportunities not afforded their east-coast counterparts. Bernard, for example, opened Spokane Junk Metals just a block away from the primary rail yard and warehouse district at the east end of Main Street. The Endelmans made a decent living over the years, enabling them to move from a boarding house in 1920 to their own home in 1940 where they lived with their three daughters and a maid. In fact, Spokane Junk Metals did so well that Bernard was able to employ his younger cousin Benjamin, who was the "proprietor" by the late 1930s and remained so until his retirement in the 1960s. Bernard, Eva, their children, and extended family lived in Spokane all their lives. Bernard died in 1954, and Benjamin died in 1971; both are buried with their wives at Mount Nebo, one of Spokane's three Jewish cemeteries.

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The Washington Cracker Company building, which still stands at the corner of Bernard and Pacific Streets, is one of the most visible reminders of Spokane's foray into the industrial world. Its high visibility is due in part to the painted signage that adorns the building, including not only the name of the company, but a unique advertisement for Snow Flake brand Crackers. Cookies, biscuits, and crackers were big business at the turn of the twentieth century, and Spokane's location amidst the rolling wheat fields of eastern Washington made it a natural hub for production and distribution.

Indeed, the Washington Cracker Company was no two-bit operation. By the first years of the twentieth century, it employed sixty people with annual revenues averaging $100,000, and was "one of the most important and growing industries in Spokane... contributing no small share to the prosperity of the city." This was also the era when powerful industrial trusts formed, reducing marketplace competition through fixed prices and outright coercion. In 1899 Herman Wittenberg, the president of the Portland, Oregon-based baked goods conglomerate that owned the Washington Cracker Company, sold out to the mammoth Pacific Coast Biscuit Company, becoming part of a "Pacific Coast Cracker Trust" soon to become infamous in Spokane.

In 1904, a trade war ensued between the Washington Cracker Company (backed by the Cracker Trust) and its nearest rival, the Inland Cracker Company owned by F.W. Friesling, a Washington Cracker Company employee between 1893 and 1903. Corporate trusts drew an aggressive political reaction in the form of the trust-busting movement of the 1890s codified in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which was largely toothless until Teddy Roosevelt took up the cause and began to aggressively break up trusts in the early 1900s. The regional "cracker war" reflected this trend.

While trust wars, which tended to exert downward pressure on prices, could be a boon to consumers, they usually drove prices up in the end; this is exactly what happened at the end of the Spokane Cracker War. By 1906, the Washington Cracker Company and the Inland Cracker Company had declared "amnesty," each doubling their price for a box of crackers from $.05 to $.10. Interestingly, Samuel Wittenberg (younger brother of Herman) was one of the speakers at a 1906 Retailers' Association Convention, the members of which expressed their general agreement with trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt's plan to "fix and enforce reasonable railroad rates," no small feat of hypocrisy considering that it came more than six months before the end of the war with Inland.

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At the corner of First and Post Streets stands a squat brick building upon which is painted "Blair Business College." The faded sign is visible from blocks away, but few people understand its importance to the educational system of Spokane in the early twentieth century.

In a rapidly-expanding industrial economy, the business college was designed to churn out clerks, typists, and bookkeepers. Before the standardization of education in the second decade of the 20th century, most Americans lived in rural settings where education beyond high-school was not common. Furthermore, in the environment of rapid urbanization and industrialization, people left jobs in the countryside to train for more technical jobs in business and industry. Blair Business College offered practical education to those whose small budgets or lack of aptitude made them ill suited to the university. Instead, students prepared for pragmatic careers by taking courses in shorthand, penmanship, typewriting, and bookkeeping. Blair Business School, like many others, also doubled as a sort of supplemental high school, offering grammar, English, and Latin classes in addition to an abbreviated summer-school session.

Blair Business School was, by all accounts, quite a successful enterprise. H.C. Blair organized the school in 1897, and within a few years over five hundred students were enrolled. The college advertised in rural newspapers aggressively, drawing prospective students from all over the Pacific Northwest. It also fielded baseball, basketball, and football teams that seem to have maintained consistently abominable losing records against Gonzaga, Washington State University, and even the local high schools.

The school closed in 1933 during the height of the great depression. The building still stands today as condo space for the re-vitalized downtown district.

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The Benewah Milk just off I-90 is an unmistakable downtown Spokane landmark. It is one of two Milk Bottle buildings in Spokane: one on Garland Avenue (built in 1934), and another on Cedar Street (the Benewah Milk Bottle, built in 1935). The buildings were designed by famed Spokane architectural firm Whitehouse and Price, who were responsible for many other buildings in Spokane including the Hutton Settlement, the Rosebush House, and the John A. Finch Memorial Nurses Home.

The Milk Bottle is a remarkable example of "mimetic" or literalist architecture, which seeks to combine form and function, allowing the building itself to become its own best advertisement.

The Benewah Milk Bottle was the home of the Benewah Creamery Company, where Newport sold dairy products distributed from his processing plant on 1st Street and Washington Avenue. The owner initially planned to build six of these iconic outlets - at a whopping $3,700 each - but only completed the stores on Garland and Cedar. Newport never specified the reason why he scrapped plans for the other four Bottles, but the Depression-Era economy (which had a profound impact on local farms and dairies) is likely to blame.

The Bottles functioned as concession stands to lower prices by "eliminating charge accounts and delivery service (except on large orders)." Newport ran a retail operation from the Milk Bottle until 1978, and since then the building has served many purposes, few of which have had anything to do with dairy products. Interestingly, it has even been the home of the Spokane County Democratic Committee.

Fascination with this building has never waned. The Milk Bottle was nominated to the National Registry of Historic places in 1985, and it continues to be a favorite attraction. In fact, Time.com listed it as one of the top fifty American Roadside Attractions in 2010, and numerous other websites include it as a must-see sight while driving through Spokane (especially since it's visible from the freeway). The easily-accessible location also makes the Milk Bottle a popular walk-by destination. Although the store on Garland was badly damaged in a fire in 2011 and has subsequently been restored, the Benewah Milk Bottle is still in good shape after seventy seven years.

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First Congregational Church (now called Westminster Congregational Church), located next to Lewis and Clark High School, has a long history. In 1838 when Congregationalists first arrived in the Spokane area. A group working with the local Indian tribes coalesced over the decades, eventually forming a church in 1879 that met in the home of Henry (H.T.) Cowley, who also became the first pastor, then met for two years in the local schoolhouse.

The church built its first building (a small wood structure) at the corner of Sprague and Barnard in 1881, but sold it shortly after the Great Fire of Spokane in 1889. In the aftermath the members sold the land and moved to the present location, building a new church in 1890. This structure was built of stone, sending the intentional message that the church was committed to the rebuilding of the city and there to stay. The bell installed in the tower was a gift from Rev. Cushing Eells, one of the founding members from the earliest period, and it served not only to call Sunday-morning worshipers, but as the warning bell for the Spokane Fire Department.

The building has evolved significantly over the years, most obviously in 1927 with the reinforcement of the main spire on the northwest corner (which altered its conical shape to create the current square shape) and the addition of a tower on the east corner where there was originally an open porch. These alterations were undertaken primarily to expand the interior space; aside from the additions, the exterior stone was left intact. This is important, as the uneven coursework is an unusual, even iconic feature that sets the church apart from others.

The Church has been central to Spokane society for almost 130 years, hosting not just Sunday services, but many other notable events including revival meetings, holiday rallies, and community events. Having benefited from grants by the Spokane Preservation Advocates' Heritage Fund, First Congregational Church is still in excellent condition, and it remains a beloved Spokane landmark.

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The Woman's Club of Spokane is a beautiful and enduring fixture of the South Hill neighborhood. The brick building standing now remains largely as it was when it was dedicated on November 5, 1928, but it was not the first structure. The first iteration of the Woman's Club was a smaller clubhouse built on the current site in 1910. In late 1920s, the members hired renowned Spokane architect Gustav Perhrson (who also designed many other notable Spokane sites) to design the new building, which "literally enveloped (the original clubhouse) in a new exterior," adding a new brick facade.

The women's club movement arose after the Civil War and gained momentum into the early 20th century. As a growing middle class enjoyed increased leisure time, women organized for self-improvement and sometimes to become involved in politics--even before women could vote. Women created study plans, formed reading circles, and became involved in "women's issues" such as temperance, child labor, and public safety.

The history of this building really began when members of all of the Spokane women's organizations met in 1905 in the Women's Hotel specifically to discuss the building of a clubhouse. Shortly thereafter, the Club organized itself under the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), and formed a corporation with $30,000 in stock issued at $10 per share. Members continued to meet in the public library until the clubhouse was finished in 1910. It seems that the Club members had substantial clout with the community, too. Membership rolls from as far back as 1905 suggest that the Club had a consistent and vibrant enrollment from its inception, including prominent residents of the affluent Browne's Addition neighborhood. Indeed, the Woman's Club and others like it likely played a significant role in securing Women's Suffrage in the State of Washington in 1910, a full decade ahead of the nineteenth Amendment.

Women's organizations were a product of the late nineteenth century Progressive Era in which women, unable to vote until 1920, instead exerted influence through a variety of associations on a wide range of causes such as temperance, children's education, better sanitation, and better working environments. Woman's Club scrapbooks going back to 1910 (currently archived at the Spokane Museum of Art and Culture) indicate that its members were involved in all of these causes and many others. Women also used the Club for more recreational pursuits, such as china painting, water color design and other things classified as "women's education" in the early twentieth century. The Club was an important center for Red Cross activity during WWI and in the mid-1930s, and hosted a wide variety of programs under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration, which the Roosevelt administration created in the midst of the Great Depression to get people back to work.

The Woman's Club has been carefully preserved over the years and still retains its original charm. All of the architectural features are in near-perfect condition, including a beautiful terra cotta rosette over the entrance way inscribed with the Club's motto, "The Club that Bids You Welcome," beneath which is a rectangular panel bearing the Club's name. The Club is used by a number of groups for a wide variety of community events, and is rented out for the occasional wedding reception or family reunion. It is, however, first and foremost still the meeting place for the modern GFWC whose "members [are] dedicated to strengthening their communities and enhancing the lives of others through volunteer service." The Spokane Woman's Club, which stands today a striking example of early twentieth century commercial-style architecture, is testament to this dedication.

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Lewis and Clark High School was not always the magnificent landmark it is today. In fact, it was founded in 1883 as schoolhouse called Central School, which became the high school when the city built separate elementary schools to accommodate the steady population growth in the last years of the nineteenth century.

With the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1880, Washington State efforts to attract immigrant labor made it necessary to fund a new, larger high school. In 1891 the city built South Central High School where Lewis and Clark stands now, and then built a second high school (North Central) north of the Spokane River in 1908. Tragically, the original South Central High School was gutted by fire in 1910, leaving only an unsalvageable exterior shell.

After moving all of the students to North Central High, the city built a new school, designed by renowned Spokane architect L.L. Rand (responsible numerous other historic buildings) on the foundation of the old. This is, by and large, the spectacular Collegiate Gothic Style building that stands today.

In addition to the beautiful structural detail dominated by the clock tower and the main entryway reminiscent of fifteenth-century European Gothic cathedrals, the school features a massive central theater with a full-size stage and proscenium, carefully restored to its original splendor when the city renovated the school in 2001 and added modern gym facilities. The halls are lined with artwork and other gifts from past graduating classes, making the school itself a sort of museum. The high school also maintains a rich trove of digital historical information, documenting the 100-year anniversary celebration, a page devoted to LC war memorials, and even a digital archive of yearbooks stretching back to 1908.

As one might imagine, Lewis and Clark High School is of central importance to the community of south western Spokane, serving as host and gathering place for a wide range of events. It is the largest school in the district with around two thousand students, and has produced some notable graduates including Washington State's current Secretary of State, Sam Reed, and Scott O'Grady, the Air Force pilot shot down over Bosnia in 1995.

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