Then and Now: Sweeny/Finucane House

Mon., Feb. 2, 2026

1963: The 1896 Charles Sweeny-Francis Finucane home, designed with Tudor-style features by architect Kirtland Cutter, stood directly in the path of the downhill route of a new connector from Bernard Street to Washington Street, which was part of a $950,000 project to create a new route up the South Hill. The route would ease traffic congestion on nearby Grand Boulevard and keep vehicles off Monroe Street during icier conditions. (Spokesman-Review Photo Archives)

By Jesse Tinsley jesset@spokesman.com (509) 459-5378

Spokane’s city traffic planners proposed extending Stevens Street up over the South Hill bluff in 1959 for safer travel and to relieve congestion on Grand Boulevard. But a historic home was in the way.

The stately brick mansion, built around 1896, had belonged to Charles Sweeny, one of Spokane’s wealthiest bankers and mining investors. The house, designed by Kirtland Cutter, was at W. 323 Eighth Ave. It sat between the historic mansion of James Glover, the city founder who lost it in the financial troubles of 1893, and the hillside estate of railroad builder Daniel Corbin.

Born in England, Sweeny arrived in Spokane in 1883, just in time to join the boom in silver mines. He bought into the several mines with partner F. Rockwood Moore, a director of the First National Bank in Spokane. Although Sweeny saw ups and downs, he transitioned from mining to real estate in downtown Spokane and Portland in the early 20th century.

In 1904, Sweeny’s oldest daughter Gertrude married Francis J. Finucane, a young banker from England who emigrated to Canada and joined the Bank of Montreal. Finucane, like his father-in-law, worked in banking, railroads and real estate for many years.

From the 1890s through the early 20th century, the activities of the Sweeny and Finucane families filled the Spokane newspapers’ society pages with stories about swanky dinners and tea parties, shopping trips to New York and Europe. Charles Sweeny died in 1916. Finucane died at his winter home in California in 1949.

Finucane sold the old home in 1936 to Frank Eichelberger, manager of the Sunshine Mine. In 1945, the home was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Harry Linden. Linden was a longtime cattle farmer and horse breeder who was involved with the development of the fairgrounds and baseball stadium at Broadway Avenue and Havana Street in the 1950s.

Linden died in 1962 and the old house, which had been purchased by the city of Spokane, served two years as a dormitory for boys attending St. George’s School before it was torn down in 1964 to build the northbound connector from Bernard to Washington streets, later named Ben Garnett Way.

Noted modern architect Kenneth Brooks lamented the demolition of the Sweeny House, telling the Spokane Chronicle in 1963 that “Cutter had a fine hand and a soft pencil, he was truly an artist.”