Jesse Tinsley

An 1890s-era building at 808 E. Sprague Ave. housed many different businesses.

Spokane’s first generation of successful business leaders left behind a handful of spectacular private homes, such as those owned by Patsy Clark Amasa Campbell and Daniel Corbin.

In the early 20th century, many businesses would try to attract skaters to frozen ponds around Spokane with convenient parking, snack bars, music played over loudspeakers, warming huts and lights for night skating.

Spokane was celebrating Christmas before the city was chartered or Washington became a state. In 1874, the entire population of Spokane, made up of five families with eight children, celebrated with a tree and a simple supper.

Fidelity Mutual Savings erected their new eight-story building at Howard Street and Riverside Avenue in 1953. A few years later, some smaller buildings north of the bank were torn down around 1957, and Fidelity added north-facing retail spaces, calling the area Fidelity Plaza.

As a teen, Joseph Merton Rosauer worked in the store his parents operated in East Spokane in the 1920s and early 1930s. At 19 years old, “Mert” Rosauer borrowed $1,000 from his parents and opened his own store on East Sprague Avenue.

Paying for parking in downtown Spokane was controversial from the beginning. Customers of downtown establishments resented paying to leave their cars on the street while merchants acknowledged that it could discourage shoppers.

It was almost midnight on March 27, 1971, when police dispatch in Post Falls called Officer Harry Button to the Spokane Street bridge over the Spokane River for an accident. Button had been Post Falls fire chief from 1957 to 1960 and a fire commissioner before becoming a police officer. Riding along with Button was Allan Chaffin, who was disabled but worked as a volunteer dispatcher for the fire department.