100 years ago in Spokane: Legendary architect Kirtland Cutter received a ‘zealously guarded’ industry honor

Spokane architect Kirtland Cutter won one of the highest honors of his profession: a fellowship to the American Institute of Architects.

Fellowships were conferred only “upon members who have contributed something to the advancement of the architectural profession.” It was an “honor zealously guarded.”

Cutter was already famous in Spokane and the Northwest, where most of his work had been done. Cutter’s signature work was the Davenport Hotel. But this honor would help spread his fame wider.

The honor was conferred at the institute’s meeting in Washington DC.

From the pioneer beat: Dr. John Wesley Hill, noted Methodist pastor, visited Spokane and reminisced about the first time he visited in 1883.

“Spokane had less than 5,000 people, and they were better-dressed and more progressive than in the Ohio I had come from,” Hill recalled. “There were no paved streets and there were few high-backed buggies or buckboards with their teams. There was a lot of horseback travel, of course, and the women all rode sidesaddles. Women then were not all sublimations of chemistry, or hot house flowers, or live bric-a-brac. They had refinement, purpose and poise and they had braved unknown dangers. (They) were pioneers who laughed at hardship and poverty.”

But “refinement” was not in evidence everywhere back in the 1880s. He said “gambling, saloons and social vice were rampant.”

“It was a frontier town in that respect,” he said.