Then and Now: 808 E. Sprague Ave.
1954: The aging office and factory building at 808 E. Sprague Ave. was at one time a discount furniture outlet for A&F Furniture Warehouse Sales but was then sold to American Sign and Indicator. American Sign and Indicator became successful selling lighted indicators signs that often read the time and temperature, which became ubiquitous in the 1960s and 1970s. The previous owner, Western Bottling, produced Pepsi-Cola and Canada Dry beverages in the 1930s and 1940s before moving to a new plant further east in 1951. (Spokesman-Review photo archives)
An 1890s-era building at 808 E. Sprague Ave. housed many different businesses.
It was first home to the Sherman-Clay Co. piano house that was founded in San Francisco in 1870 by L.S. Sherman and C.C. Clay. The Spokane store was run by F.R. Sherman and P.T. Clay, sons of the founders of the store, which grew to 40 stores before opening a Spokane location around 1907. The store moved to a downtown building around 1914. The music store sold pianos, band instruments and sheet music, and added radio sets when Spokane’s first stations went on the air in the 1920s.
When Sherman-Clay was closing in 1929, employee Ruth Sampson bought out their stock of sheet music and started the Ruth Sampson Sheet Music Co., which became one of the largest music houses in the country. She was a talented singer, performing with the Spokane Philharmonic, a predecessor of the Spokane Symphony. She ran the store for 50 years until selling it in 1979.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the building became the home of Western Bottling, which had bottled beer starting around 1905 and later produced Pepsi-Cola and Canada Dry beverages. Western moved to a new bottling plant at 4414 W. Sprague Ave. in 1951.
In 1953, A&F Furniture Warehouse Sales occupied the space for a few years before a new company, American Sign and Indicator, moved in with offices and a manufacturing plant. AS&I, founded by two Spokane brothers, sold lighted signs, mostly reading the time and temperature while mounted outside offices and banks, were ubiquitous in the 1960s and 1970s. Manufacturing eventually moved into the Columbia Lighting factory near Felts Field in 1967.
In the late 1960s, Bovay Engineers moved their team to the Sprague Avenue building. Bovay had started in Houston, Texas, and established the Spokane office in 1955. Bovay was sold to Dames and Moore of Seattle in 1993.
In the 1990s, a modernized building at 808 E. Sprague Ave. served as radio studios for the Clear Channel radio company, which bought several Spokane radio stations in 2000. The company rebranded itself as iHeartMedia, which then went through bankruptcy and slashed jobs in many markets. Today, the radio company is at 5106 S. Palouse Highway.