South Hill Craftsman – the William and Ella Warner House – returns to vintage glory, earns spot on historic lists

The William and Ella Warner House on Spokane’s South Hill is now listed on the Spokane Register of Historic Places and the Washington Heritage Register and is nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.

The home at 2627 S. Manito Blvd. was built in 1916. William Prentice Warner worked as a railroad agent in 1935. His wife, Ella, died in 1956, and the home went to their son, James Warner, who rented it out. It is now owned by Paul and Suzanne Markham, who purchased it in 1987.

Though the Craftsman style home is now restored, it wasn’t much to look at when they bought it, Suzanne Markham said. The large overhanging eaves were cracked and broken from years of heavy snow and ice damage.

“It was just an absolute wreck,” she said. “This just was a big job. People were steering clear of it.”

Some of the walls had been damaged by the 10 cats who called it home. But the heavy beam ceilings remained, and the original woodwork was still intact and hadn’t been painted.

“The floors in the living room and dining area were just beautiful,” she said.

It was the home’s age that attracted them to it. “We’ve always, both of us, loved antiques and everything old,” she said. “It’s not a big, ostentatious, fancy house. It was a very middle-class house.”

That’s not to say the home was in good shape. “We pretty much tore into the interior to make it livable,” she said. “There were some things that needed immediate attention.”

The couple would spend their nights and weekends doing much of the remodeling work themselves over the next several years. The original kitchen cabinets had been torn out and replaced with plywood ones, likely in the 1960s, Suzanne Markham said, and those had to be removed. In an upstairs hallway, carpet had been glued directly onto the original wood flooring, requiring a long and tedious process to scrape off the glue.

“We’re the ones with crowbars tearing out the roofing,” she said. “The slave labor is us. We’re the grunts. You name it, we did it. There’s pretty much not an inch we didn’t touch.”

Paul Markham recalls the time it took him to repoint the rock walls in the basement. He dug out the old mortar, which had largely turned to sand, and replaced it with concrete. He estimates it took a year to do each wall.

“I got in there with a tool and scraped it,” he said. “I never thought it would ever end.”

Some things had to be replicated but the original icebox, which is now used as a storage cabinet, still sits in the kitchen. The breakfast nook that was in the kitchen had been ripped out and replaced with a washer and dryer, but the couple restored it.

“We replicated what it would have looked like,” Suzanne Markham said. “It’s very close to what was in the blueprints.”

The tiny bathroom off the kitchen has an old style pull chain toilet with the water tank up near the ceiling. While the style is old, it is a reproduction, she said.

All of their furniture also matches the style of the home. Suzanne Markham said she estimates some of it is nearly old enough to be original.

“We don’t have anything modern in the house except the microwave and the stove,” she said.

Linda Yeomans, who has been a historic preservation consultant for decades, helped put together a large binder full of the history of the home, complete with original blueprints and pictures of the Markhams remodeling their home.

“This house is one of the best representations of Craftsman architecture in Spokane,” she said. “This house is fabulous.”

The Markhams love to show off their home. They’ve hosted the Mother’s Day tour of historic homes put on by the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, which attracted 1,500 people to their home over two days. They’ve also hosted Allegro Baroque and Beyond musical performances.

“We have a lot of parties,” Suzanne Markham said. “We’re not afraid of crowds.”

Now that the restoration is complete, the couple are relaxing and enjoying their home.

“These years are nice,” Paul Markham said. “We’re enjoying them.”