The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper The Spokesman-Review
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Then and Now: Hoban Building

The Hoban building was built with space for retail businesses on the ground floor and apartments above at 2319 N. Monroe around 1908, and is seen here in a 1943 photo. City directories hint that the building didn’t really flourish. Shops came and went, as did the upstairs tenants. In 1980, Spokane Public Radio moved it, put their studios on the upper floors and stayed until 2016. (THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW PHOTO ARCHIVE / SR)
The Hoban building was built with space for retail businesses on the ground floor and apartments above at 2319 N. Monroe around 1908, and is seen here in a 1943 photo. City directories hint that the building didn’t really flourish. Shops came and went, as did the upstairs tenants. In 1980, Spokane Public Radio moved it, put their studios on the upper floors and stayed until 2016. (THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW PHOTO ARCHIVE / SR)

The Hoban Building at 2319 N. Monroe St. is a sturdy, two-story building with retail shops at street level and several apartments upstairs. County records show it was built around 1907.

The Hoban Apartments’ first classified ads offered “eight strictly modern 4-room apartments” with gas for fuel and hot-water heat.

On the same newspaper page was another ad for the six retail shops on the ground floor. “Nice, modern store room in strictly modern brick building” it read, adding it would be a good location for “drugs, furniture, dry goods, grocery, market or other business.”

Although records don’t note the building’s origins, it was likely associated with businessman Anthony Hoban, who lived nearby on Carlisle Avenue. A survey of the Hoban Building in city directories shows a spotty rental history. In the mid 1930s, three of the ground-level shops were vacant, perhaps typical of the Depression years. A plumber named Daniel Strackbein had a shop there.

In 1933, legal notices indicate Palmer M. Erickson sued the family of Anthony Hoban, then deceased, over the division of Hoban’s estate. The reason, their relationship and the disposition of the case isn’t clear from records, but Erickson owned the Hoban Building in 1943 when it was sold to C.M. Perry for a modest $20,000.

In 1960, the city directory shows the upstairs apartments mostly vacant, and subsequent listings show the upper rooms converted to offices. The Strackbein plumbing shop had become an antique store, a sight that would become more common on North Monroe.

A radio station may have been the longest tenant in recent memory at the Hoban. Nonprofit radio stations began popping up around the country following the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which encouraged noncommercial TV and radio broadcasting, and the founding of National Public Radio in 1970.

Spokane Public Radio, born in the basement of a South Hill home in the early 1970s, raised money and built a 56,000-watt station, then moved their studio and offices upstairs in the Hoban Building in 1980.

KPBX broadcast from the shabby upper floors of the Hoban Building for more than 35 years until SPR moved to their new home, a former fire station at 1229 N. Monroe, just down the street.