The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Photos: Once-private home now a bed and breakfast

1889: Workers stand outside the home built by Bernhard Loewenberg and later owned by E.J. Roberts, for whom it is remembered.
1889: Workers stand outside the home built by Bernhard Loewenberg and later owned by E.J. Roberts, for whom it is remembered.

The E.J. Roberts mansion is a symbol of the boom and bust of Spokane’s early years. It was built in 1889 for Bernhard Loewenberg, a Prussian immigrant and owner of the Loewenberg Mercantile. But Loewenberg went broke after his store burned in the great 1889 fire, and he traded the Victorian Queen Anne-style house for the more modest home of Roberts, a civil engineer who worked with railroad builder D.C. Corbin on railroad and mining projects. Roberts and his wife, Mary Tracy, raised five sons and a daughter at the mansion. The house stayed in the family until 1959, and was later used as a rooming house and split into apartments. Since the early 1980s, the Moltke family has owned the home and restored it to its original splendor. It is now a bed and breakfast and available for events.

– Jesse Tinsley

On the Web: Find more photos at spokesman.com/then-and-now