Jesse Tinsley

Businessman W.G. Willis bought the southwest corner of Post Street and Riverside Avenue from pioneer land developers A.M. Cannon and J.J. Browne in 1886. He began building the three-story Falls City Building.

The Casino Theater, on the 800 block of Riverside Avenue, opened in 1909.

Early bridges across the various channels of the Spokane River were made of wood, then steel and, eventually, concrete or stone. And when the Great Northern Railroad depot opened on Havermale Island in 1902, with its iconic Clocktower, access from downtown was only via the Howard Street bridge. So a new steel-supported bridge was hastily built, aligned with Washington Street, that dead-ended at the depot to get passengers to the trains.

In the early 1900s, to house the many single men and women flocking to fill many new jobs, dozens of SRO – single residence occupancy – hotels were erected downtown.

In the late 1800s, America entrepreneurs have created a revolution in retail business by appealing to the thriftiness of the shopper and offering a wide variety of merchandise to save customers time. This was the origin of the dime store.

On December 17, 1886, J.J. Browne, Henry C. Marshall and A.J. Ross incorporated the Spokane Street Railway company to build the rails and operate streetcars. The first priority was to connect Browne’s Addition with downtown Spokane.

The automobile changed the American traveling culture. Stately hotel blocks became less important than the motor inn, motel, or what the Spokesman-Review called “highway hotels.”

The Spokane River connects Idaho and Washington, Natives and white settlers, and a variety of landscapes and ecosystems.

As World War II began in earnest, the wounded returning from war overwhelmed the military hospital system and new hospitals were planned. In 1942, city of Spokane donated 160 acres and and the county donated 80 more in northwest Spokane for a hospital.

James P. McGoldrick, born in 1859, started in the timber business in Minnesota. Seeing that most of the lumber he sold came from the Northwest, he moved to Spokane in 1906 and bought a mill south of Gonzaga College, east of downtown Spokane.

Spokane Buddhist Temple started 1945 with a rented apartment and a group of six dedicated Buddhists.

Since James Glover rode up to the Spokane Falls in 1873 and made a deal to buy out the two squatters on the land around the falls, there has been an informal competition to build bigger, taller, and more impressive structures than had existed before.

Agnes McDonald (1865-1961) was one of Spokane’s most colorful characters. She was only 35 when her husband, a wealthy mining investor, died, leaving her with two sons to raise. His investments left her comfortably well off.

1910 was a watershed year for Spokane.

In the bustling post-war era, Spokane produced a cadre of elite young architects who challenged and pushed each other with every project. That competition produced many notable features in the city, including the 1959 Washington Water Power building.

Bob Strahorn planned the downtown Spokane Union Station, opened in 1914, to compete with the Great Northern depot, built in 1902.

Around 1899, a VOA chapter started in Spokane, organizing their charitable activities where they could find space. The group offered religious services along with food and shelter.

James M. Comstock, born in 1838 in Wisconsin, arrived in Spokane in time to witness the great fire of 1889 and start Spokane Dry Goods with Robert Paterson. It became the Crescent, Spokane’s premier department store for a century. He also worked in real estate and owned other businesses. He served a term as Spokane mayor, starting in 1899. James Comstock died in 1918.

Brothers Albert P. and William M. Wolverton, ages 25 and 31, arrived in the frontier town of Spokane Falls in 1880 and paid $350 for a lot on the northeast corner of Riverside Avenue and Wall Street. There they completed the two-story, later three-story, Wolverton block, which holds the distinction as the first brick building in Spokane, in 1881. They started a hardware store together.

The first Monroe Street bridge, built by Spokane Cable Railway and partners, cost $42,000 and opened in 1889. Two other iterations followed, the last being the concrete bridge we see today, with four small pavilions designed by Kirtland Cutter.

Anthony McCue Cannon, born in 1837 in Illinois, was a restless young man in search of business ideas. He made and lost fortunes in Kansas City, Los Angeles, and Portland, where he had married and divorced.

In the chilly morning of Dec. 18, 1915, the steel-framed 1892 Division Street Bridge collapsed into the icy water.

Mission revival was based on the Franciscan missions built throughout California in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and was all the rage from the 1890s to 1915.

In 1943, the military began building dozens of barracks-style four-unit buildings, stretching from the Garden Springs neighborhood eastward to Hangman Creek. The development was called Victory Heights.