100 years ago in Spokane: Police appoint woman ‘special officer’ to report on ‘moral conditions’ in parks, dance halls

Mrs. Grace Kendall was appointed a “special officer” of the Spokane police, with the authority to inspect and report on the “moral conditions” in the city’s parks and dance halls.

She would be working under the direction of the Florence Crittenton Home, Spokane’s home for unwed mothers. She was described as a “woman of wide experience.”

Mrs. Kendall was “expected to do valuable work.”

From the school beat: Peaceful Valley was finally getting its own school: the H.T. Cowley School, named after the Spokane pioneer and onetime editor of the Spokane Daily Chronicle.

Peaceful Valley parents had been advocating for their own school for years, since it was difficult for small children to make the steep climb up to Browne’s Addition. The new school was expected to be ready for first- and second-graders in September.

The two-room brick school would go on to serve Peaceful Valley for 13 years, but it closed for good during the Great Depression. Yet the building still exists at the corner of West Clarke Avenue and North Maple Street, with the Maple Street Bridge looming overhead. It has recently been converted into apartments.

For more about the history of Peaceful Valley, check out the new historical essay about this neighborhood, posted at HistoryLink.org, the Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History.