Apartment building originally built to house female faculty is now inhabited by frat boys.

As a college town, Cheney has no shortage of apartment buildings, but few have stood the test of time as gracefully as the Philena Apartments. Built in 1929 by Archibald Rigg and Roland Vantyne, these apartments were financed by Clarence Martin, the future governor of Washington State. The apartment building was named after Martin’s mother, Philena, and became a home to many faculty members from the Cheney Normal School. As the years went by, the Cheney Normal School became Eastern Washington University, and the Philena Apartments shifted from faculty housing to student housing.

The first occupants of the Philena Apartments were faculty for the Cheney Normal School, and the majority of these tenants were unmarried female teachers. There are a few reasons that young unmarried women were the most popular renters at the Philena Apartments. In the early 20th century, it was considered scandalous for unmarried females to live alone, so apartments were a popular choice that maintained a woman’s reputation. Another contributing factor is that the women simply couldn’t afford to live elsewhere. Female teachers were paid significantly less than male teachers by the Cheney Normal School.

The apartments are a well-preserved example of Romanesque architecture. The building’s brick exterior is in pristine condition and features prominent rounded windows. The apartment’s design is unique because the northeast corner of the building features a beautiful glass-paned entry, to what used to function as a retail space on the main floor. Over the years, this retail space functioned as the College Inn restaurant, a bank, a hair salon, and even an ice cream parlor.

From being named after a woman, to housing mostly female faculty members from the Cheney Normal School, the Philena Apartments have always been closely tied to the women of Cheney. In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, the building was acquired by the fraternity organization Sigma Phi Epsilon in the mid-1990s, and has since become a space dominated by men. The fraternity organization has barely managed to skirt around multiple scandals, and after the most recent investigation in 2015, 44 of their 58 members resigned from Sigma Phi Epsilon. From faculty to frat boys, the Philena Apartments have been home to many different communities that are deeply connected to Eastern Washington University.

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A prominent downtown building's namesake once threatened a Spokane newspaper editor at gunpoint.

Today’s Bennett Block is comprised of what were once three distinct buildings: Bennett Building, constructed in 1890; Lockhardt Building, constructed in 1890; and the Star Hotel Building, constructed in 1892. They were built after the great fire that destroyed most of downtown Spokane in 1889. These buildings housed a wide variety of unique businesses, including the Snow Shoe Saloon (1899), William Carroll Cigars and Tobacco (1900), a Japanese restaurant (1901), the Angel Contos Shoe Shining Parlor (1925), and the A-1 Drug Company (1929) to name a few. The three buildings became one property in 1928 when a Spokane real estate developer, John G. F. Hieber, obtained the trio of buildings and decided to turn them into a single property.

The building’s namesake, Bascomb H. Bennett, first arrived in Spokane to work as a cashier at the Bank of Spokane Falls. This bank was owned by a prominent resident of Spokane, Anthony M. Cannon. Bennett secured his place in Spokane society by marrying Cannon’s daughter. Once he had gained some social standing, Bennett began managing both the Arlington and the Grand Hotels in town. He became one of the richest young men in Spokane, and after the fire of 1889 Bennett decided to construct his own building.

At the time, many believed Bennett to be perfect gentleman, but others knew that he had a darker side. In 1882, Bennett and his father-in-law confronted Spokane Times editor, Francis H. Cook, because the Spokane Times had published material that cast some of Spokane’s founding fathers in a negative light. Bennett and Cannon threatened Cook with pistols, and demanded that the Spokane Times retract damaging statements that had been published about Cannon. Cook ended up defending himself by beating Bennett and Cannon with an iron stick, and Bennett and Cannon were charged with attempted murder. They were never convicted, mostly because the jury was filled with Spokane socialites that were friends of the pair. This incident has been referred to by The Spokesman-Review as “one of the most infamous confrontations in Spokane newspaper history.”

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