[Private Residence]

The Shadle-Comstock house on West 9th Avenue was built in 1911 by Willis A. Ritchie. Set in the Cliff/Cannon Neighborhood, it is one of four historic houses built in Tudor Revival style, modeling the 18th and 19th century "black and white" row houses built in the English village of Chesterton. As listed on historicspokane.org "the home displays a steeply pitched roof with a slight flare at the eaves, multiple cross gables, three prominent front-facing gables at the facade, deep bargeboards with tapered tails, a covered front porch at the first floor, corner boards, and false half-timbering with stucco infill. Influenced by the Craftsman style, the front porch has a low-pitched hip roof and is supported by thick square wood columns. The porch deck is supported by a foundation made of black basalt rock. A steeply pitched gabled portico projects over the front steps at the porch roof and is embellished with false half-timbering." The interior is highlighted by a formal fireplace with glazed ceramic tile, credited to Earnest Batchelder out of Pasadena, California, founder of Batchelder Tile company and known as "a leading designer in the American Arts and Crafts movement."

Willis A. Ritchie began his "largely self-taught" career in Ohio and Kansas before maturing to become one of the premier architects in Washington, after moving to Spokane in January 1892. Taken from an 1893 excerpt from An Illustrated History of the State of Washington (written by Rev. H.K. Hines) upon his arrival in Washington, Ritchie was responsible for such designs as (the numbers to the right are the original costs) "the Clark county courthouse at Vancouver, Washington, $40,000; Thurston county courthouse, Olympia, Washington, $115,000; a school building at Wallace, Idaho, $11,000; Prescott and Lincoln school buildings, Anaconda, Montana, costing $15,000 and $25,000 respectively; and Spokane city building, $60,000." He also took first place in a Washington State building competition for the World's Fair. The Jefferson County courthouse in Port Townsend, which resembles the Shadle-Comstock house in overall style, in particular displays the depths of Ritchie's creative talent as an architect.

James Comstock, who had the house built, was a New York native who upon moving west to Spokane in 1889 became the Vice-President of the Spokane Dry Goods Company, President of the Dry Good Realty Company, and served on the Spokane City Council from 1894-1899 with two of those years as the city mayor. The house was originally lived in by his daughter Josie Shadle-Comstock and her husband E.A. Shadle. Shadle also happened to be a close business associate with James Comstock, acting as the Treasurer of the Spokane Dry Goods Realty Company and as a trustee of the Spokane Dry Goods Company. Thus the reason for the house's name, "Shadle-Comstock" becomes clear. Both the Shadle and Comstock families are well known around Spokane for their philanthropy, contributing heavily to a multitude of city parks, schools and other buildings.

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Located in the Hillyard Market Street District, the Inland Empire News Building was built in 1903. The two-story brick masonry building was originally built for furniture merchant John Stough, who occupied the building for eleven years from 1903 to 1914. From 1914 to 1919 the building was occupied by another furniture merchant named Frank Murray. Having served as a furniture store for the better part of 16 years, the building eventually became the source of the local Hillyard paper, the Inland Empire News, before later becoming the Northside Post. The building maintained a printing business for over thirty years, surviving into the 1950's.

The block design of the Inland Empire News Building fit in with the rest of the "Market Street" district buildings that were erected between 1901 to 1948. These were second generation buildings on Market Street, with most of the earlier, pre-1900 wood buildings being destroyed by fire. As the Historic Preservation Office has to say, "The simple one and two-story buildings represent the construction, materials and design of early twentieth century commercial structures associated with a typical working-class town such as Hillyard, a community platted in 1892. In that same year the Great Northern Railroad began construction of its Western Regional Terminal Facility, and its huge rail yard and locomotive shops. With strong economic ties to activities and business generated by Great Northern, Hillyard continued to expand as the railroad prospered." Experiencing a subsequent increase in wealth, Market Street between the years 1901-1903 and 1906-1907 saw the construction of seven new buildings that stand today, including the Inland Empire News Building.

Presently the building is occupied by 'Market Street Antiques', which won third place in the 2012 Inlander best antiques store in the Spokane area.

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The Garland Milk Bottle was built in 1935, along with its sister location downtown. Billed as "designed to build better men and women by making dairy products more attractive to boys and girls" with a cost of $3,700 per building, the Milk Bottles were originally designed as retail outlets for dairy merchant Paul E. Newport. The dairyman had plans of building six such operations, but settled on the two still standing today.

Notable for its unique architecture, taking the shape of a 38 foot high Milk Bottle (naturally), one could buy all sorts of dairy products from the Garland location, including ice cream. The building operated as a retail dairy for forty years under Newport family ownership until 1974 when it went out of business.

Under the new ownership of Shirley Wright and Virginia Burrill the former diary retailer was renamed, "A Little 2nd Hand Shop in the Giant Milk Bottle," and began selling a "mishmash of castaways ranging from old postcards that sell for 25 cents to an 1890 Chippendale slant-front desk that sells for $2,500." In 1986 the milk bottle was converted once again, this time into an ice cream and dessert parlor under the new ownership of Bill and Nola Graham.

Today 'Mary Lou's Milk Bottle' is an old-timey diner with award-winning milkshakes, along with homemade burgers and sandwiches so affordable one wonders how they stay in business. Disaster struck in September of 2011 when a fire burnt down most of the Milk Bottle and the neighboring Ferguson's Cafe, which is historic in its own right. After nearly a year of rebuilding the Milk Bottle is back up and running. Aside from a few minor renovations that included hollowing out the 'neck' of the bottle and some upgraded cooking equipment, one would hardly notice a difference between what it was before the fire and what it is today.

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The Garland Movie Theater opened in late November 1945 to a line that stretched around the block with the movie It's a Pleasure, starring Sonja Henie. According to the Spokane Daily Chronicle the Garland was nothing less than state-of-the-art, "modern in every detail, the blue and wine auditorium drew particular comment on the continental seating and extra-large spacing between rows. Germicidal lamps on the walls keep the air purified. The lobby was lined with baskets of flowers."

The original capacity was near 1,000 seats, although today that number is 630 due to larger seats installed to meet modern standards of comfort.

Fourteen years after it opened and still "Spokane's newest and most modern theater" (Spokesman Review. May 16, 1960) the Garland Theater merged with the Favorite Theater operation which owned several theaters in the Spokane area, including drive-ins on East Sprague and East Trent. Several upgrades accompanied this merger, including new carpeting and newer seats.

After changing ownership again in the early seventies to the Sterling Recreation Organization based out of Bellevue, the Garland Theater found itself with a bit of controversy on account of their new foray into X-rated movies. According to the Spokesman Review "'Madam Kitty' and 'Emmanuelle' are the first X-rated films to be shown at the Garland since 1972 when 'A Clockwork Orange' was screened for several weeks" (Feb.1, 1977) 'Rocky,' by the way, played alongside these two X-rated films for several weeks.

Thanks in part to the changing times the Garland Theater closed its doors between 1986-1988, struggling to compete against the new Cineplex's that came to dominate the movie-going marketplace. Don Clifton bought the Garland in late 1988, converting it into a discount theater, which it still is today. As Clifton said at the time, "The Garland draws fans from two basic groups: the people who usually wait for video, and the people who want to see a specific film again but don't want to pay a full price."

This discount model that Clifton describes has lasted until present day, even as ownership changed hands once again in 1999 to Katherine Fritchie.

With a trendy new cocktail bar, The Bon-Bon, adjoined to the theater one can sip on some drinks before heading into a movie selection that ranges from just-out-of-the-regular-theater blockbusters like 'The Dark Knight' and 'Men In Black' to kids movies like 'The Mighty Ducks,' and 'Shrek,' to oldies like 'The Terminator,' 'Ghostbusters,' and of course 'Die Hard.'

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