Home built in Cannon Hill neighborhood for judge in 1911

Set among a group of historic single-family homes built between 1907 and 1940 in the Cannon Hill Park neighborhood on Spokane’s South Hill is the Judge Henry and Alice Canfield House, a Craftsman-style home in the Arts and Crafts tradition that stands out for not just its design but also because of its striking colors.

The exterior was all white when it was purchased in 2004 by Matthew Melcher and Juliet Sinisterra. They decided that the color did little to highlight the wood and design elements of the house, so they chose contrasting colors in the earth tones that they liked – red, charcoal gray and a mustard color. They both knew something about good design – Melcher is program head at Washington State University’s School of Design and Construction and a designer with Uptic Studios, and Sinisterra has a degree in architecture and is economic development manager with Downtown Spokane Partnership and Business Improvement District.

The house at 628 W. 21st Ave., on the Spokane Register of Historic Places, was built in 1911 for Judge Henry Ward Canfield and his wife, Alice, during the first phase of development of the neighborhood. The street is divided down the middle by a tree-lined green belt, and the property itself contains century-old sycamore trees. When the Cannon Hill Park Addition was developed for homes in the early 1900s, it was done so in an effort to conform to the design of nearby Cannon Hill Park by the famed Olmsted Brothers, which valued natural areas, and this remains evident in the neighborhood today.

According to the nomination form for registry listing prepared by historic planning and design consultant Linda Yeomans, general contractor Gus Bostrom built the house, though the name of the architect is not known. The one-and-a-half story house with twin gabled dormers exhibits the gabled roof, full-width front porch and other elements associated with the Craftsman style, though other influences are present as well.

The interior retains its original box beam ceilings and other features, including solid quarter-sawn oak plank flooring containing 1-inch-wide strips of dark walnut inlay along the perimeter of the living and dining room floors.

The original occupants purchased the home for $7,800. Canfield died in 1929, and his wife moved out in 1934. Canfield, originally from Ohio, earned a law degree from the University of Michigan and moved to Colfax in 1892, where he was active in Democratic Party politics and was elected prosecuting attorney, 1894-1896. He was a founding regent of what was then Washington State College, 1897-1903, and in 1908 was elected to the Superior Court of Whitman County. In 1911 he moved to Spokane with his wife and family and formed the law partnership Voorhees & Canfield with fellow attorney Reece Voorhees, operating out of downtown Spokane’s Trader’s Bank Building. Committed to constitutional law, he also taught law at Gonzaga College.

The Canfield House was sold in 1937 to Willard and Charlotte Duffy, owners of Duffy Lumber Co. In 1956, insurance agent Robert Cary Smith and his wife, Virginia, purchased the home, which was sold again to high school math teacher William Niggemeyer and his wife, Joan, in 1961. After residing there for 43 years, Niggemeyer, who raised his 10 children in the house by himself after his wife’s sudden death, sold the house in 2004 to the current owner.

“Since I have been here, some of the Niggemeyer children have come to the house and asked if they could sit in the yard or in the house for a while,” said Melcher, who now owns the home on his own. “It’s obvious this had been a loving and spiritual home their father made here for them.”

Melcher and his former wife had been living just a few blocks away when they decided they needed a larger home in which to raise their children, though they wanted to remain in the neighborhood. “We went around leaving notes at houses that looked interesting to us asking if they were interested in selling,” Melcher said. “Bill responded, and two years later he sold it to us.”

“We loved the circular floor plan with stairs in the middle and, of course, the beams and wonderful wood,” Melcher added. Although some remodeling had been done in the 1960s, they did some major work inside, including replumbing and rewiring. They enclosed the back porch in order to be able to expand the kitchen, and when they moved the main-floor bathroom, they uncovered an interior brick chimney at the site of the relocated power room, the corner of which remains exposed as a design element.

“The goal was to maintain the character of the house,” he said. Even false box beams were installed in the new kitchen to match true box beams in other main floor rooms. “I appreciate the historic character of the home and the parklike setting of 21st Avenue – feels to me like a Norman Rockwell scene.”