Landmarks Panel Approves Historical Listing For Lost Gardens

The Spokane City-County Landmarks Commission threw its support behind reclamation of two historic gardens on the lower South Hill.

The commission on April 19 voted unanimously to recommend the gardens for listing on the Spokane register of historic places.

Preservationists want to bring new life to the lost gardens of U.S. Sen. George Turner, his wife, Bertha, and their neighbor, D.C. Corbin.

The Corbin and Turner families occupied adjacent mansions along Seventh Avenue between Lincoln and Stevens streets, on land that was incorporated into Pioneer Park in the 1940s.

Their elaborate landscapes were never maintained, but ruins of the rock structures can be found along the hillside below Cliff Drive.

Efforts to restore the gardens also got help last week from the Spokane Parks Foundation, which approved $15,000 in grants for the gardens.

Lynn Mandyke, director of the Corbin Art Center in the historic Corbin mansion, said the money will pay for the work on a master plan for the project.

Mandyke and other preservationists are seeking private donations and grants to pay for the work.

“This is an outstanding project and something the Park Board has been very much interested in,” said Mike Stone, interim park director.

Stone told the landmarks commission the significance of the gardens comes from their connection to influential pioneers.

“The site, as you know, has a long history in Spokane,” Stone said.

Turner, who liked to be called Judge Turner, served a single term in the U.S. Senate at the turn of the century and was a political ally of President Teddy Roosevelt.

His home was designed by Kirtland Cutter and initially occupied by F. Rockwood Moore, who organized Spokane’s First National Bank and Washington Water Power Co.

The Turners bought it for $35,000 in 1896, a year after Moore died. The gardens above the home were expanded with an elaborate landscape in 1911 and 1912.

It included a trout pond with waterfall, lily pond, greenhouses, teahouse, rose garden, arbors, staircases and pathways.

Ruins of the rock work can still be seen in a tumble of brush and young trees.

Corbin’s garden included a castlelike turret atop a rock formation with two footbridges leading to the structure. His home was already listed on the local register of historic places.

The commission voted to amend that listing to include the garden.

Mandyke said the gardens had been nearly forgotten until the ice storm in 1996 caused so much tree damage on the hillside that workers had to remove the fallen timber.

In doing so, they uncovered the ruins that had largely been hidden, although the upper trout pond had a history of drawing teenagers seeking a secluded meeting place.

Mandyke formed a committee, which researched the gardens’ history. Last year, the panel held a community meeting to talk about the possibility of restoration.

The idea has since won approval from the Park Board as the Corbin and Turner Heritage Garden Project.

The commission’s approval of the historic listings now goes to the City Council for approval.

Commission member Brian Poirer said he found the garden ruins to be surprisingly extensive.

“We are going to have a lot of fun discovering how things were done and how people lived in those days,” Poirer said.