Hutton’s Dream Lives On In Modern Day
Trees line both sides of the driveway like a pair of arms eager to embrace children who need a good home.
Fields of yellow spread out around a ring of brick cottages and a grassy play area that is the Hutton Settlement campus.
Large pine trees crest a rolling hill on the north edge of the 364-acre plot.
At the heart of the Pasadena Park complex in the Spokane Valley are the children who found a home in one of the four cottages.
Just the way Levi Hutton envisioned it.
Hutton, himself an orphan at age 6, founded the children’s home in 1919, 18 years after striking it rich in a North Idaho mine on a Friday the 13th.
Hutton and his wife, May Arkwright Hutton, who also was an orphan, made millions from the lead-, zinc- and silver-producing Hercules Mine. It was that money that built the Hutton Settlement.
On November 1, 1919, the Hutton Settlement officially opened its doors to orphans.
May died before her husband welcomed Jane Weise Anderson, the first orphan, to Hutton Settlement. Bright’s disease and a kidney ailment took May’s life in 1915.
When Levi, who was the settlement’s first administrator, died of complications from diabetes on November 3, 1928, his will named his private secretary, Charles Gonser, administrator of the Hutton Settlement. Gonser served in that capacity until his retirement in July 1970, when Robert Revel was hired to replace him.
Revel came to the Hutton Settlement in May 1961 as the campus superintendent. By January 1967, he had been appointed assistant administrator.
When Hutton died in 1928, he left the bulk of his $1.2 million estate to the Hutton Settlement. The inheritance has been turned into an extensive Spokane-area real estate portfolio, which still pays the yearly bills at the children’s home.
Though its status as a self-supporting entity has not changed, the kind of kids Hutton Settlement accepts has changed slightly.
Today, children are placed at the settlement by the courts or parents who are unable to raise them. This is in contrast to the traditional orphan who was left without a home or parents.
A careful screening process assures that the children do not have severe behavior problems or severe physical handicaps. The settlement is not a treatment facility and is, therefore, not equipped to handle these cases.
A treatment facility was not Hutton’s vision. Instead, he dreamed of a home filled with the happy noise of homeless children.
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