Then and Now: Union Bus Depot
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.
Section:Then & Now
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Then and Now: Union Bus Depot
As transportation evolved from horseback and stagecoach, to streetcars, regional electric trains and buses, the operators had to find a place for their passengers to wait for their ride. Several local and regional bus lines filled the need for local and regional transportation. One of the busiest was the Auto Interurban Company, owned by Herbert S. Hawley. He brought together several smaller bus lines to organize the first bus depot in 1924 on the south side of Trent Avenue, now called Spokane Falls Boulevard, west of Howard Street. Three buildings were connected and space rented to food vendors, barbershops and convenience stores.
Bus traffic grew as passenger trains declined, but before private car ownership became common. Three bus lines, Auto Interurban, Overland Greyhound, and the Washington Motor Coach company formed the Spokane Union Bus Depot company and built a new bus station at 1125 W. Sprague Avenue, next to an auto garage and on the site of a former Episcopal school.
The Union Bus Depot, built at a cost of $500,000, was started in 1946 at the corner of Sprague Avenue and Jefferson Street. Because of wartime limits on private construction still in effect and post-war material shortages, the depot plans required a federal government review and there were wait times for some building supplies. But the two-story concrete main building opened in October of 1947 and featured a large indoor waiting room with a ticket counter, a restaurant, a barber shop and a beauty shop.
Some of the local bus companies continued to pickup passengers on Trent Avenue for a few more years.
The Post House restaurant, owned by a Greyhound subsidiary company, in the new depot was one of hundreds in bus stations across the nation. The term “post house” was a reference to the restaurants at western frontier towns in the stagecoach era.
The bus station, which eventually was wholly owned by the Greyhound bus company, was taken out of service in 1994 and the terminal moved to the former Northern Pacific Railway depot at Sprague Avenue and Bernard Street. The remodeled depot was renamed the Spokane Intermodal Facility.
The empty bus station was purchased by the Cowles Real Estate Company, which also owns The Spokesman-Review, and it has been used for parking and storage ever since.