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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

From our archives, 100 years ago

The new $300,000 building housing Cheney Normal School (today’s Eastern Washington University) was dedicated in a ceremony that had its share of irony.

The keynote speech was delivered by Gov. Ernest Lister, who vetoed the appropriation for the building two years earlier. The Legislature overrode his veto in a “legislative fight that has become historic.”

Lister pointedly told the crowd of 1,200 that the building was “the finest and costliest educational institution the state had ever erected.” Now that the faculty had been given the most modern facility possible, he said, he was passing the responsibility for its success on to them.

The event took place in the building’s beautiful auditorium, decorated “in Ionic plasters, with Corinthian leaf.” The library was “lighted by softly stained glass.”

“One of the many modern pieces of equipment is a microscopic machine that throws the enlargement of the subject studied upon a screen,” said the paper.

The building was “in all respects fireproof,” a significant advance since the two previous buildings on the site had been destroyed by fire.

Principal Noah D. Showalter also spoke and “received an ovation.” Today, the building bears his name: Showalter Hall.