The front porch: South Hill more complex than common stereotype

The car repairman on the phone asked where I’d be driving from, with my noisy exhaust and the mystery part sticking out between the front tires.

“The South Hill,” I told him. I tried to make my voice as friendly as possible. I wanted him to like me anyway.

Of course, the repairman just wanted to know how soon I’d be at his shop. And lots of people on the North Side wouldn’t have known what to call that part, either. And I have no doubt that the repairman makes more money than I do. But still: When I answered “the South Hill,” I felt slightly apologetic. I was coming from was a place where people don’t know what to call the part hanging off the car but have enough money to pay someone on the North Side to know. I was naming more than a geographic location.

What exactly that “more” is, I’m still trying to figure out. I moved from downtown to the South Hill two years ago, and even though five years ago – before I moved to the city – I didn’t know South Hill from Bunker Hill, some version of Spokane’s oldest ideas about class and status has wormed itself into my brain.

“It’s a concept that began early on,” said Tony Bamonte, who has written about 10 local history books with his wife, Suzanne. “It used to be called ‘snob hill.’ “

After the discovery of gold and the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad, silver was found in North Idaho in the late 1800s. Capitalists and prospectors stopped in Spokane for supplies, and after they made their money, some came back with fortunes to flaunt.

They displayed their wealth by constructing commercial buildings downtown – the Hutton Building, the Paulsen Building – and, especially, by building mansions.

Residential development started downtown and moved west and south. The first luxurious homes went up in Browne’s Addition, close to downtown, but soon they began to move up, particularly to an area called “The Hill” below the Manito plateau between Stevens and Monroe streets.

Residents were after the views, Bamonte said. From “The Hill,” you could see for miles. It was only natural, he said: People like to be above. “They love being high and looking down.”

The South Hill became the home of the elite. And along with many of those mansions, that perception has endured.

But it’s fading.

“My grandma lived at 29th and Bernard when there was nothing south of her,” said South Hill resident Judy Peden, 64. “People then used to say to her, ‘Ooh, you live on the South Side,’ and it was supposed to be something prestigious.”

Peden grew up in Plaza, south of Spokane on Highway 195, where she also raised her children as a single mother with help from welfare checks and food stamps, before moving to the South Hill in 1990. She chose the South Side to be close to her children, grandchildren, friends and church.

When she started volunteering at the Southside Senior Activity Center, she worried she didn’t fit in. She’s not a fancy dresser. She takes her shoes off in public and gets raspberry stains on her pants.

But Peden got over it. And she said that while she knows some people think of the South Hill as snooty, it’s just not true. “If I could live here, anyone can,” she said.

Phil Thrasher, 83, has lived in Spokane since 1960, always on the North Side. Now he and his wife, Bert, 68, live in Hillyard and play in the Hillyard Belles and Trainmen Band.

They said they stayed on the North Side because that’s where their friends are.

As for the South Side, “I don’t class it as rich,” said Bert, “I really don’t.”

“It’s a mixture” of rich people and everyone else, said Phil. “It’s not just one or the other.”

It’s true. On the one hand, the South Hill is a place where you can get your cat groomed. That is to say, the South Hill is a place where a business plan has been undertaken on the assumption that its residents have the money and inclination to hire a professional to groom their cats, even though, as we all know, cats have been grooming themselves for years now.

On the other hand, the South Hill is also a place where people live with plastic sheeting instead of glass in their window frames. It’s also a place where people stab, shoot and rob one another and where I don’t like to walk alone at night.

Bamonte said that in the ‘70s and ‘80s he noticed a change in perceptions of the people who live on the South Hill.

“The way I’m seeing it, it doesn’t connote snobbishness anymore,” he said. “It’s just a geographic location, the South Hill. It’s too mixed with different residences and different social statuses.”

Meanwhile, the biggest, most expensive new houses in Spokane continue to go up outside Spokane, in the county.

According to a Spokesman-Review analysis last year, five of the 10 most expensive homes in Spokane County were near Liberty Lake, three in the Mead-Colbert area north of Spokane, one in Spokane Valley and one between the Valley and the South Hill.

So maybe the South Hill will gain new connotations. Or a new kind of snobbishness: The South Hill – where the view is a mixture.