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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Then and Now: Mearow and Hale buildings

Present day: The Mearow Block and the Hale Building are two of four buildings still standing on the south side of the 200 block of West Riverside Avenue and are part of the East Downtown Historic District. Each have notable architectural characteristics. The buildings date from 1905 to 1909 and have street-level business spaces and residential rooms above. (Jesse Tinsley/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW)
Present day: The Mearow Block and the Hale Building are two of four buildings still standing on the south side of the 200 block of West Riverside Avenue and are part of the East Downtown Historic District. Each have notable architectural characteristics. The buildings date from 1905 to 1909 and have street-level business spaces and residential rooms above. (Jesse Tinsley/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW)
By Jesse Tinsley jesset@spokesman.com(509) 459-5378

There are four buildings on the south side of the 200 block of West Riverside Avenue that date back to 1905 to 1909. They are some of the few existing single-room-occupancy hotels that once filled old Spokane. More than 150 such hotels housed workers from 1895 to 1915, when the city’s population exploded, quadrupling to more than 100,000 people in 20 years.

The buildings are now part of the East Downtown Historic District.

The two buildings in the center of the four, the Mearow Block and the Hale Building , were once furniture stores.

Joseph Mearow settled in Spokane in 1903 after being raised as one of 14 children on a Minnesota farm. After establishing the Bell Auction and Furniture business in 1912 nearby on Main Avenue, Mearow bought the Bickett Hotel building at 227-229 W. Riverside Ave. around 1925 and renamed it Bell Furniture. He connected the rear of the Bickett to the building behind it, extending the building to Sprague Avenue and calling it all the Mearow Block.

Mearow retired in 1939 and sold the business to Sidney and Leon Wurzburg and their brother-in-law John C. Clark. The new owners moved the showroom down a block, to 319 Riverside Ave., around 1948.

Joseph Mearow died in 1954 at age 84.

Sylvan Furniture, operated by Sylvan Dreifus, opened in Bell’s space. Dreifus had worked in his father’s store in Colfax before coming to Spokane.

At street level, the Hale Building next door at 233 W. Riverside Ave. housed drug stores for most of its first 50 years. Dreifus and his wife Eleanor later bought it in 1968. After remodeling in 1977, Dreifus expanded the furniture business into the Hale Building next door, reconfiguring the front to make the Hale the main entrance.

Sylvan Dreifus died in 2004 and the family sold the Riverside buildings and moved the store to 1233 N. Division St. The store closed in 2007 after 60 years in business.

Developer Rob Brewster bought the buildings and began restoring the Hale building. After Brewster ran into financial trouble, developer Dan Spalding, owner of the Longbotham Building, bought the Hale from the bank, and former Spokesman-Review photographer Jed Conklin bought the Bickett and remodeled the upstairs as apartments.