Historians have called Spokane's California House, built in 1878, the city's first hotel. The building was destroyed in Spokane's great fire in 1889.

The southwest corner at the intersection of Riverside Avenue and Stevens Street had a men's clothing shop in the Fernwell Building for a century.

Now over 130 years old, the Review Tower is an enduring symbol of city's early newspapers. It was built for the Spokane Falls Review, which combined with The Spokesman in a merger designed to save both struggling newspapers.

There was a modest residence hotel at 811 W. Riverside Avenue from around 1900 to the late 1960s that was named similarly to a historic Seattle hotel of the era, but it likely had no relationship to it. The ground floor below the Rainier Grand Hotel was the first home to a pair of successful retail establishments.

A three-story lodging house stood at the northeast corner of Third Avenue and Lincoln Street from 1907 until 1966. At first it was called Hotel 223, but the name was too cryptic for many visitors so the operator, Phoebe B. Cox, changed the name to Hotel Butler.

A full-service auto shop operated on the corner of Browne Street and Main Avenue from 1913 to 1964, passing through several owners in its 50-plus years. It was a replaced by a Goodyear tire store. Today, the site is the Main Market Coop.

Building Interstate 90 through Spokane most of a decade, but much longer to complete all the connections around the corridor.

Spokane's funky riverside neighborhood went from being a seasonal Native fishing village to a refuge for laborers, new immigrants, and transients to a funky counter-culture haven.

The extension of Spokane Falls Boulevard from Lincoln Street to Monroe in 1968 created a complex five-way intersection at Monroe and Main, but it solved some congestion problems on busy traffic days in the downtown area. .

A long-gone building at Second Avenue and Lincoln Street served as the city's first Montgomery Ward department store.

Starting around 1910, Spokane had an annual weeklong event every spring called "Cleanup Week" where a city booster group encouraged everyone in Spokane to clean up their lawns, plant trees and shrubs.

One of Spokane's oldest surviving businesses started as a typewriter dealer at the beginning of the 20th century and continues to supply other businesses with furniture and office supplies.

The Galena Building on the northeast corner of Post and Riverside was home to many retail clothing and shoe stores until 1975, when it was remodeled for Pacific First Federal Savings and Loan.

Opened in 1949, the Spokane Union Bus Depot at 1125 W. Sprague Avenue had a waiting room, a restaurant, a barber shop and beauty parlor. It closed in 1994 when the bus station was moved to the Spokane Intermodal Facility at the historic train station at Bernard and Sprague.

Frank N. Pierone started a menswear store in 1947 and it survived for more than 40 years.

Fresh out of Washington State's business school, Phil W. Alexander started as a department store buyer in the 1920s. In the mid-1930s, he started his own store.

Central Christian Church, founded in 1886, stood at Third Avenue and Stevens Street from 1900 until about 1970, when the church was sold and the congregation built a new church on the south hill.

As victory in Europe seemed possible in 1944, the war against Japan was still in doubt and the national slogan became "Stay on the job!" In Spokane, it was also the name of a massive military exhibition in Riverside State Park.