Then and Now: Manito Grocery
The store was started in 1906 by P.O. Floan and moved into a two-story building he erected at 3003 S. Grand Blvd. in 1911.
Section:Then & Now
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Spokane Public Library via The Northwest Room
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Jesse Tinsley
| The Spokesman-Review
Then and Now: Manito Grocery
Manito Grocery was an institution on Spokane’s South Hill for almost 60 years.
The store was started in 1906 by P.O. Floan and moved into a two-story building he erected at 3003 S. Grand Blvd. in 1911. The building had four storefronts, which held the grocery, a meat market, a real estate office and a drugstore. Apartments were upstairs.
Floan traded the store for another store in Potlatch in 1915.
Frank Bordwell, who had learned the grocery business in Wallace, operated the store for more than 20 years before selling to employee Edward Walther around 1929. Walther had joined the business in 1911 and his brother Herbert had joined in 1917. Bordwell died in 1947.
The Walther brothers modernized the store, changing it from having products secured behind counters to having products easily accessible to shoppers on shelves.
The store was one of dozens of small groceries spread around Spokane. Supermarkets, featuring all categories of items in a single store, were on the horizon, a trend seen through the 1930s as entrepreneurs formed stores into chains such as Safeway and Piggly Wiggly.
In the 1920s, the store became part of the United Retail Merchants Stores and was listed with 50 to 60 other small neighborhood grocers in advertisements in 1925.
In 1932, Spokane Police raided the grocery in a campaign to take away slot machines that were common in neighborhood stores.
In 1940, the Walthers redesigned the store again, doubling the square footage by taking over the drug store for more grocery space and adding more dairy refrigeration.
The Walther family announced in 1960 it was partnering with developer James S. Black to plan a large shopping center on the land at 29th Avenue and Grand Boulevard. The grocery, along with the former Spokane Junior College building, would be torn down to clear the way. The neighborhood organized against the rezoning necessary for the project and sued. In 1967, the state Supreme Court decided in the developers’ favor.
Meanwhile, Edward Walther died in 1966 at the age of 69, after 46 years at the store. His son Paul and brother Herbert went ahead with the project. Manito Shopping Center opened in 1969 with a Safeway grocery store, an Ernst-Malmo home store, a Pay ’n’ Save drugstore and a Rhodes department store, which was later renamed Lamont’s.