Then & Now Galleries

A narrow building at S. 9 Post St. held several businesses since it was built in the wake of the 1889 fire.

The small Rialto Theater in Hillyard was organized and built in 1921 by a conductor on the Great Northern Railway.

A Cold War-era military facility in Hillyard helped local Army Reservists stay ready for service.

The venerable Peyton Building has stood at Riverside and Post since 1890, but was almost demolished after a deadly fire in 1898.

Spokane's premier park, filled with manicured gardens, shaded walkways and landscape features, was laid out in the 1880s, but was in doubt when the original developer went bankrupt in the 1890s.

The onion dome on the 1890 Cushing Block, at Howard and Sprague, was an example of Moorish, also called Islamic, architecture of the era.

Spokane Falls Boulevard was the name chosen in a renaming contest in 1974 for the wide street that faces Riverfront Park.

The Auditorium Theater, completed in 1890, gave early Spokane a taste of highbrow entertainment.

The Desert Saharan Motor Lodge followed a historic hotel and the site is now a luxury hotel tower.

The Exposition Building was built in 1890 to host the Northwestern Industrial Exposition of Spokane Falls.

J.L. Phelps, who started working as a photographer in Spokane in 1893, was the city's favorite photographer of babies and children for almost 40 years.

The Bodie Block, now called the 1889 Building, is one of the oldest in Downtown Spokane, having been erected right after the 1889 great fire that leveled downtown Spokane.

The Lindelle Block, constructed in 1890, was financed by Lindon W. Bates, an engineer who worked for railroads in the 1880s an 1890s, but went on to worldwide fame for his dredging and waterways projects in America, Europe and Asia.

Coeur d'Alene Park, in the center of Browne's Addition, was Spokane's first official park. In Spokane's early days, before other parks were added, it was the site of many social and civic events.

The Havana Block, built around 1903 on the north side of the 500 block of Front Avenue, which is now Spokane Falls Boulevard, housed business and a rooming house until it was torn down to make way for the new Union Station and its elevated track system.

Frederick Blackwell's Coeur d'Alene and Spokane Railroad, which began rolling in 1903, moved mail, agricultural products and people through Spokane Valley, adding new life to the tiny depots along the way.

The pool at Liberty Park, east of downtown Spokane, was built in 1920 and refurbished several times. The pool, for a variety of reasons, was notoriously cold and lacked amenities like plentiful parking, extra seating and picnic tables.