Then and Now: The Hamlin Hotel
The hotel that once stood on the north end of the Monroe Street Bridge was the Electric Hotel, owned by the Washington Water Power Company, and later renamed the Hamlin Hotel. The photos are from around 1910 and 2021.
Section:Then & Now
Image One
Photo Archive
| The Spokesman-Review
Image Two
Jesse Tinsley
| The Spokesman-Review
Then and Now: The Hamlin Hotel
In the upper right of the older photo is the Hamlin Hotel at the north end of the Monroe Street Bridge, sometime between 1909 and 1912.
Before it was the Hamlin, the three-story wood-framed hotel and retail block at Monroe Street and Bridge Avenue was the Electric Hotel and Saloon, built around the time of the 1889 fire. It’s location afforded a view of Spokane’s waterfalls and of the Monroe Street generating station, owned by Washington Water Power, which also owned the 36-room hotel. The clientele was working class and transient. A handful of different operators tended to the hotel.
Businessman John G.F. Hieber, who had made his money in brewing before investing in real estate, bought the building in 1905.
Henry J. Hamlin, before managing the Hamlin Hotel, was already in his 30s when he arrived in the mid-1880s and worked in the livestock and livery business, caring for horses and renting out equipment. He would spend 50 years in business.
Hamlin also served as a county sheriff’s deputy through the 1890s and early 20th century and his exploits were retold in many newspaper stories.
In 1901, Hamlin was nearby when a man drove several cattle to a butcher shop in East Spokane. The butcher thought the man didn’t seem like a cattle trader and alerted Hamlin. Hearing that, the man bolted from the store and took off on his horse. Deputy Hamlin pursued the man on his own horse, exchanging several revolver shots with the suspected rustler at full gallop. Neither was hit, though a bullet went through Hamlin's coat. The man got away, but was arrested later in The Dalles, Oregon.
In 1907, two Italian men argued outside Hamlin’s livery stable and one fired a gun at the other. A crowd gathered and the gunman took off running with with as many as 20 other Italian men in pursuit. The men shouted directions to Hamlin as he joined the chase, but the man was lost among some riverfront shacks. Two other policemen caught the shooter.
Hamlin took over the hotel in 1909 and ran it until 1913, during which the steel Monroe Street Bridge was removed and rebuilt in concrete. In the 1920s, the hotel became the Falls View Apartments. Hieber tore it down in 1934. Hamlin died in 1936.