Landmarks: WWP pioneer investor and his wife owned West Central home built in 1885
If he is not thought about on any other day of the year, Spokane pioneer William Pettet is certainly on the minds of many the first Sunday in May, courtesy of the long and steep hill that winds up from the Spokane River to a neighborhood in west Spokane.
Pettet Drive – called Doomsday Hill by the tens of thousands of runners in Spokane’s famous rite of spring road race known as Bloomsday – is encountered late in the race and is the ultimate uphill challenge that tests racers’ endurance and fitness. Not everyone thinks fondly of Pettet at that time.
And just as they make their way up the street named for him, they unknowingly also pass close by his home.
Just off the upper end of the hill, on North West Point Road, is Pettet’s 1885 house, an original blend of Stick and Queen Anne styles set back on nearly 2 acres overlooking the Spokane River. Built for William and Caroline Pettet, it is one of the oldest homes in Spokane.
The house is a two-story gable-front structure having two single-story wings. And while it has received interior upgrades (modern kitchen, bathroom additions, etc.), the overall initial design remains, and so the home was listed on the Spokane Register of Historic Places in 2012.
It is interesting to note that while most of Spokane’s pioneers came to the area as much younger men and spent a lifetime working and investing in the region, Pettet was 65 years old when he arrived in the area in 1883. At an age when others were often in retirement, he was just beginning to make important contributions to the development of the region. By the time of his death in 1903 at age 86, he was considered one of the wealthiest men in the city.
Recognizing the value of the Spokane River as a power source, Pettet was involved with harnessing it as a financer and organizer of the Washington Water Power Co. (now Avista Utilities). He founded Spokane’s electric light system through the Edison Electric Illuminating Co. (which led to installation of the first permanent arc lights on the city’s streets) and platted many tracts of land in the city. He also helped finance and build the Spokane County Courthouse.
Pettet came from England to America as a young man and had numerous experiences, including a possible interaction (discussed in historical accounts, but not proven) with the doomed Donner Party of westward travelers in 1846.
He was actually living in Bermuda in the Virgin Islands in a home he and Caroline called Glasgow Lodge before moving to Spokane. When they purchased their property at 1735 North West Point Road, and commissioned their new home, they apparently used their Bermuda house as a pattern for the design and called it by the same name.
After her husband’s death Caroline Pettet resided there until she died in 1912, after which their son, George, a cashier and bank teller for Spokane & Eastern Trust Co., lived there. Through the years, descendants of other Spokane pioneers also called Glasgow Lodge their home. In 1946 Col. George Clarke (grandson of pioneer Anthony Cannon) lived there, and in 1974 William Powell Jr. (grandson of pioneers Amasa and Grace Campbell) purchased the home.
Current owner Bonnie Bush, Spokane County Juvenile Court administrator, had always wanted to have an older home. She and her husband, Larry, principal at Spokane Valley High School, were living at Liberty Lake and had begun looking around for one in 2014. She drove by the neighborhood and upon spotting the for sale sign walked up to the front door and looked in. There she saw the large reception hall with its original ebony-finished fir plank flooring, fireplace and stairway to the second-floor gallery – “and it all just grabbed me,” she said.
Though reluctant at first, her husband began to see what he could do with the yard (his specialty), much of which had become overgrown, and they both got engaged with the property, even though they knew nothing of its history at first. Their children were grown, “so this was our time,” Bush said.
The house was in good shape, she said, but it held a few surprises – from the numbered Harold Balazs poster found in the attic to the “floating” second floor bedroom, which is built over a part of the reception hall but not supported from below on one corner. Perhaps the most charming surprise is in the form of the Prohibition Room in the basement. One section of the basement is separated by a wood frame wall which contains a row of closets. The center closet can be pushed back to reveal a hidden space behind it, constructed in the 1920s during the Prohibition era, during which time liquid refreshments of a certain kind were perhaps stored there.
The Bushes have held elaborate parties at the home – with Halloween parties being their favorite. In addition, their daughter, Nichole, was married in an outdoor wedding on the property in 2016, and son Travis also held his wedding ceremony there this past September.
It has been a labor of love living in and working on the home. However, as their children have settled in North Idaho – and there are grandchildren now in the picture – the Bushes are thinking they’ll be moving in that direction soon.
“Even so,” Bonnie Bush said, “this has been the most wonderful home, the very place I dreamed of ever since I was a child.”