Bricks stir memories of Schlosser smokestack

“It’s just a pile of bricks now. Over there,” he said, gesturing. “About a half a block.”

This is how Jarred answered me as I asked him if he knew about an old greenhouse smokestack I was looking for.

“They knocked it down about two years ago.”

I was on vacation and traveled to Spokane to look up a few things from my past.

You see, many years ago, about 1915, my grandfather had built a greenhouse in Hangman Creek Valley. I had heard that the greenhouses were no more but that the smokestack was still standing. Very impressive was it: red brick with the name “Schlosser” embedded in white brick.

I remember that it was quite large and very tall. It was on the Inland Empire Highway.

Quite often when I met people, they asked if I was any relation to the “Schlosser smokestack” Of course, I always answered “Yes, it was built by my grandfather.”

Then people would say “Whatever became of that family?” So begins my story.

Edward Schlosser had done an apprenticeship in the Berlin Gardens of Germany. He left Germany, possibly to avoid military service there, and emigrated across Canada while working for the railroads, as he apparently was an excellent and skilled boilermaker.

The railroad had a hotel in Spokane where the workers were quartered. The hotel had a café, where Helene worked as a cook and waitress.

Edward courted and eventually married Helene.

They settled in Spokane, and Helene bore him two sons, Dan and Sam. Work on the railroad was slowing. Edward knew he could raise flowers in a greenhouse. But, would it be practical to raise vegetables in a greenhouse?

With some help, he built what I have heard was the first greenhouse in Spokane in order to grow hothouse tomatoes and other vegetables to sell during the cold seasons. There were plenty of rich customers because many fortunes had been made in mining and logging around the area.

Edward’s Winter Gardens did well, and he was able to expand and to build the smokestack for his greenhouses. He needed the smokestack in order to burn wood in boilers to make steam to heat the greenhouses in the winter.

Later the boilers were modified to burn coal, which was imported to the area by the railroad. Edward later told me that, “after the car, my favorite invention was the automatic coal stoker.”

My grandmother, Helene, had told me a little about the “old days.” After harvesting the tomatoes, on snowy days they packed them in boxes with sawdust for insulation, loaded the boxes on a horse-drawn sleigh, covered with blankets and quilts to protect them from the cold, and trucked them up the Inland Empire Highway to various markets.

During better weather they used a horse-drawn wagon. Eventually a truck replaced the horses.

Helene complained about the hard work of feeding those boilers with logs. Of course, if the boilers weren’t tended and the fires went out, the greenhouses would freeze and ruin all their last six months of work. The two boys grew up working in the greenhouses.

Eventually Edward added fresh flowers and bedding plants to his product line, which he also trucked to markets in Spokane. I was too young to remember much about the greenhouses.

I do remember that the boilers were very large, the steam pipes were big, and sometimes while I was walking through the greenhouses, they would “hiss” at you.

The two boys grew up working in the greenhouse, but after they married they decided to set out on their own.

Dan, my father, opened a retail flower shop, Schlosser’s Flowers in the Central Market in downtown Spokane. This shop did extremely well during the early 1940s.

Soldiers and sailors were in training at Farragut Base and traveled to Spokane on weekend liberty. They courted the eligible girls of Spokane and bought a lot of flowers.

When the Central Market closed after World War II, he relocated to North Wall Street, next to the old City Hall. This shop was later moved to NorthTown and still exists.

Sam, my uncle, started his own greenhouse and retail flower shop at Appleway and Pines — Schlosser’s Spokane Valley Florist.

Sam specialized in growing bedding plants (especially pansies), chrysanthemums and Christmas poinsettias. University City Shopping Center bought him out, and he moved the whole operation about a mile west on the Appleway.

He was approached by the Volkswagen Corp., which wanted his location for Valley Volkswagen. He sold out and retired to Mesa, Ariz.

Edward and Helene were tiring and in the early 1940s, the Gothman family bought the greenhouses in Hangman Creek, and so they retired.

Edward and Helene had seven grandchildren. As they grew up, all of them worked in their family’s flower business. However, none of them is actively involved in the flower business today.

For more than 80 years the smokestack stood as a sentinel to this family and as a landmark in Spokane. I am saddened to find that it is gone.

Things change. Today it’s just a pile of bricks.