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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Then and Now: The Nagel Block

1956: The venerable row of budget hotels, bars and cafes facing Trent Avenue, originally called Front Street, mainly served the travelers who passed through the nearby rail stations and the employees who worked in the area. As transportation modes changed, an oil company leased the lot for a gas station and the buildings were torn down, a dozen years before the removal of the rails for Expo ’74. (SPOKESMAN-REVIEW PHOTO ARCHIVES)
1956: The venerable row of budget hotels, bars and cafes facing Trent Avenue, originally called Front Street, mainly served the travelers who passed through the nearby rail stations and the employees who worked in the area. As transportation modes changed, an oil company leased the lot for a gas station and the buildings were torn down, a dozen years before the removal of the rails for Expo ’74. (SPOKESMAN-REVIEW PHOTO ARCHIVES)
By Jesse Tinsley jesset@spokesman.com(509) 459-5378

At the start of the 20th century, the hotels and bars along Front Street, which became Trent Avenue, then was renamed Spokane Falls Boulevard in 1974, served weary train travelers and the railroad workers that labored nearby. After World War II, a few grimy blocks of Front would sometimes be called Spokane’s “skid row.”

R.T. Daniel came to Spokane in 1879 and invested in real estate downtown. Around 1900, he built a two-story commercial building at the corner of Stevens Street and Front Avenue and leased it to Fred Nagel for a bar and a hotel.

Daniel would go on to build real estate fortunes in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Miami before he died in 1949.

Nagel was born in Germany around 1858 and came to the United States at the age of 15. He opened the Nagel Saloon on the downtown corner then finished the upstairs in small hotel rooms, calling it Tennessee House. Later, Nagel would organize and manage other hotels in the downtown area. He died in 1918 at 60.

Other lodgings nearby, including the Seattle Hotel, the Great Northern Hotel and the Dempsey Hotel, had modest rooms to rent, usually with a bathroom down the hall. The nearby Coeur d’Alene Hotel belonged to “Dutch Jake” Goetz and Harry Baer, and their raucous bar offered drinks, cigars, entertainment, haircuts or a shoe shine.

In 1909, a Spokane Press news story described a typical crowd at Nagel’s. “The crowd of laboring men, not yet washed after their day of toil were singing a song and drinking, but when it was near 8 o’clock they bade each other good night and were off for home.” The story contrasted the bars along Trent with other parts of town, saying “few of the lower class were to be found south of Main Avenue. The district was frequented by more of the men with families and their conduct was noticeably better. So on it went throughout the middle class saloons up and down Sprague Avenue, Post, Lincoln and Monroe.”

In 1908, Tennessee House became the Liberty Hotel, which remained until the 1940s. The neighborhood slowly cleared out as passenger train travel declined and older businesses were replaced with second-hand stores, street missions and vacancies.

In 1957, the Nagel building and adjacent Vermont and Yale buildings were torn down for a new Standard Oil gas station and parking lot.