Then and Now: Spokane Coliseum a long time coming

The Spokane Coliseum hosted hundreds of events over 40 years, but it took 40 years just to get it built.

City boosters began talking about a municipal auditorium in 1912. Committees were formed. Government selling bonds for a commercial building seemed questionable, and legal opinions were sought. The only indoor venues in Spokane at the time were the National Guard Armory or a high school gym. A building would cost at least $500,000, more than any politician wanted to spend without a public vote.

In 1919, the committee decided the building would be dedicated to veterans of World War I. The first tangible proposal was for a dignified art deco theater at the county fairgrounds. Put to a public vote in 1931, it was soundly defeated. The plans were too vague, voters said.

In the late 1930s, organizers proposed a nonpartisan, independent auditorium board to relieve the city leaders of political pressure accompanying the process. As World War II wound down, the campaign began anew.

“A municipal auditorium has reached the position of American communal life of being a civic necessity,” E.S. Hennessey of the auditorium committee wrote in 1945. “The building should be of dignified appearance and permanent construction, but not lavish in expensive materials or design. Utilitarian and functional should be the watchwords.”

He said the building should be able to host concerts, lectures, stage shows, boxing, wrestling, basketball, horse shows, circuses, scout jamborees, roller derbies, ice hockey, expositions and more.

The vote failed in 1948 but passed in 1953. The bond supplied $2 million, and donors, mostly clubs and lodges, added $500,000. Emma Rue, the daughter of pioneer Col. David Jenkins, donated an undeveloped, rocky field at Boone Avenue and Howard Street. Builders used 8,500 yards of concrete and 750 tons of steel.

On Dec. 3, 1954, opera singer Patrice Munsel opened the new Coliseum with a gala concert. Opening week events included a Catholic mass, Spokane Flyers hockey, Whitworth-Gonzaga basketball, Handel’s Messiah and country singer Jimmy Wakely. The Coliseum seated up to 8,500, but only about 6,000 for hockey and other sports. Jimi Hendrix, Lawrence Welk, Elvis Presley, the Grateful Dead, Hulk Hogan and Judas Priest all took the stage at the “Boone Street Barn.”

It was replaced in 1995 with the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena, which is operated by the Spokane Public Facilities District.