Woman’s Club needs catalyst
Each day cars zip past the Woman’s Club of Spokane on the corner of Ninth Avenue and Walnut Street, with its brick façade, rose window and vine-circled terra cotta. It’s “The Club That Bids You Welcome.”
The drivers likely know little about the club and its historically significant building. In September club members will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the club’s presence on that site. Club revenues from weddings and other rental events have dropped 60 to 70 percent in the last year, and members are cutting costs and dreaming up ways to preserve their graceful clubhouse.
“It’s very lucky to have survived into the 21st century,” says house manager Rosemary Small. “It’s a well-built building, and it’s a well-loved building.”
While the 10,000-square-foot building is completely paid for, the club must pay taxes, insurance and other costs. The building, listed on local, state and national historic registers, can’t be sold. Should the club disband, the structure must be donated to the public library.
The club held its first meeting on the present site in 1910, and in 1928 architect Gustav Albin Pehrson designed an expansion. It contains two auditoriums upstairs and two meeting rooms and a kitchen downstairs.
On the walls of the Rose Room hang the photographs of all of the club presidents, with hairstyles that progress from Victorian updos to finger-waved bobs to 1930s topknots. Early members included millionaire May Arkwright Hutton, founder of Hutton Settlement, and Sonora Smart Dodd, Spokane’s founder of Father’s Day. In 1936, the club turned to the city’s wealthiest citizens, with familiar names such as Ferris, Cowles and Stanton, to help pay off the mortgage.
On a recent evening, the members of the house committee huddled around a table in the Rose Room until late into the night. Their building needs air conditioning, a stylish new paint color scheme, better acoustics, a ramp for accessibility and a commercial kitchen, yet the recession has decimated their budget.
This summer, they’ve decided to let their cleaning service go and volunteer to take up mops and bleach to clean the clubhouse themselves. They’ve cut rental prices in half for July and August, as low as $375 for a wedding with 150 guests.
They’re also brainstorming ways to attract more dollars and energy.
The club has reflected the lives of Spokane women for more than a century. It provided the first day care and the first public library in the city. It supported women getting the right to vote. It housed the Red Cross and USO dances during World War II. Today it donates scholarships and helps fight domestic violence.
The club shows off its massive collection of vintage clothing during an annual spring fashion show. One hundred years ago women had narrower shoulders because they didn’t work out. Today’s young women shoot baskets, run marathons and lift weights. Many young models can zip up the dresses only until they reach their broad shoulders.
Contemporary women who want to wield power may be more likely to seek the mayor’s office or the boardroom. But women still need connection and support for all the reasons they ever did. This building could be a home for the book clubs, dinner groups and board meetings that now occupy the lives of many South Hill women.
It’s also the perfect spot for 20- and 30-somethings to express their love of all things vintage and retro.
What the Woman’s Club of Spokane truly needs are younger women (lawyers who can help it apply for 501(c)(3) status, color and design experts and marketing geniuses) who can hoist it on their strong, wide shoulders and carry it into its next century.
It’s not hard to create a vision for the building. House committee chair Correen Morrill imagines a social, service and cultural center, with a community theater, concerts and dances. Small sees adding a wedding coordinator or serving low-income neighbors with cooking classes. President Ginger Bowman-Rape envisions a meeting room with a cozy coffeehouse atmosphere.
The Cliff Cannon Neighborhood Council, says Small, imagines turning the building into a community “sizzle point,” the next Rocket Market or South Perry Pizza, attracting neighbors to flock together and hang out.
Any transformation will take an entrepreneurial spirit. Perhaps a business would be willing to lease and renovate some space. No doubt community advocates and wealthy benefactors must come to its aid once again.
Spokane’s no stranger to outlandish renovation schemes that eventually become reality. If the Davenport Hotel and the Fox Theater can be revived, surely our community can find a way to help this brick beauty recapture her sizzle.