Jesse Tinsley

Spokane Chronicle business writer Frank Bartel wrote in January of 1973 that visitors to Expo ’74 “will get a very close look at the seamier side of Spokane.”

The nine-story Welch Building, built by financier and railroad builder Patrick Welch at Howard Street and Main Avenue, opened as the home of the department store Culbertson, Grote-Rankin when it was built in 1914. The building took up a quarter of a city block and upper floors held many office tenants, including the Farm Credit Administration and Welch’s investment company.

Preparation for Expo ’74 led to clearing many aging commercial buildings from the Spokane River corridor. But some buildings from Spokane’s early businesses survived after the fair.

Although it took hundreds of architects, engineers, designers and builders to create Expo ’74, the artistic vision of artist Harold Balazs was everywhere at the world’s fair.

The stately five-story building, with a soaring roofline, on the northeast corner of Riverside Avenue and Washington Street has had several different names through the 20th century.

Stretching from the Model T to the Model A era, the Universal Auto Company was a Ford car dealership that began operation on Havermale Island. The name was likely borrowed from Ford’s nickname for the Model T as the “universal car,” referencing the car as a platform that could serve as a passenger car or adapted as a truck or cargo van. Fifteen million Model Ts were sold between 1908 and 1926.

It took several actions of the federal government to get the U.S. Pavilion built at Expo ’74 in Spokane.

Several bridges over the Spokane River for horse and auto traffic were once aligned with Washington Street stretching across the north and south river channels.