Messages in a Cyber-Bottle between a Couple of Old
Marooned Pirates
Skywalks in Spokane's Downtown
E-
I'm happy to see much of downtown Spokane as it was. It's happy memory time
to take an early morning walk through the familiar streets, seeing familiar
buildings after being gone for over 40 years. It's important for any person
to have some visible roots of his past, otherwise, it's mere memories, and
they, unlike buildings, fade.
But I'm also happy to see Spokane move forward. The skybridges, which
weren't there in our day, look nice and are very functional. They also add a
uniqueness to the city. I have not been in any other city with so many
skybridges. Portland has one, I believe. It's a city that blends the old and
new quite well. A city I am proud to still claim as "home."
My primary memories of Spokane from our youth would be Newberry's and The
Crescent.
Newberry's was the first store that size I had ever been in when we moved
there in 1952. I was fascinated by the escalator ... stairs that moved! The
juicy hotdogs that rolled on those metal grills by the northwest door. Lots
of neat toys. A meatloaf served daily at the lunch counter. The photo booth
where we Loganites would go into with a friend and get a series of photos,
with us mugging, for what, 50 cents? Four photos on the strip. Take the bus
into town and get off right in front.
But the Crescent. Ahh, yes, the Crescent. HQ for Boy Scout supplies. Great
place to buy presents for moms on Mom's Day and Christmas. If you wanted to
meet someone, it was "at the clock." Everyone knew that was the
big clock in the center, on the main floor. My first suit was purchased
there, for my first semi-formal dance my junior year. Complete with
tie. That's where I got my model railroad stuff, my lead soldiers and Army
vehicles made in England. It just seemed like a complete, comfortable place
to be, not only to shop, but just to be in. I had a warm feeling of
familiarity walking in the Riverside door.
I think the last time I was in the Crescent was after graduation and I ran
into Lita Larsen. Seems like we had a long conversation under the clock.
Last time I also have seen her and have not even heard about her since.
Finally, I am so pleased the Davenport has been saved and reopened as a
hotel. That will be my place to stay when I visit. What a swell, swank place
... real class. All histories I have read about Spokane, and that has been
several, mention the Davenport. My first night in Spokane was there. I
worked there. I danced several times there. We had our prom there. My WSU
fraternity had it's Spring formal dance there. What a serene lobby, with the
uniformed bellhops, the singing canaries, the fountain. A real treasure. A
real fond memory.
W-
The Crescent
- then
(Click to enlarge)
Davenport
Isabella Room - 2002 (Redness due to low
light conditions.
Click to enlarge)
The Crescent
I also bought Boy Scout supplies there. Nobody ever told me to meet them at
the clock, although I heard the expression a number of times. I imagined a
sizeable fraction of Spokane's population elbowing each other for a good
position under the clock on Saturday morning. One Saturday I checked. Nobody
was loitering at the clock but plenty of people were milling through the
aisles.
I remember a bank of elevators with floor indicator dials on
the main floor. It fit my concept of a New York City department store,
though I'd barely been outside the Spokane city limits. It seems to me
that the main floor was somewhat 'L' shaped in that a part of store wrapped
past the left side of the elevators. The word "Perfume" comes to
mind when I think of that side of the store. I remember going up a slight
incline. It was probably part of an old expansion.
My early memories include a crescent logo on green paper
bags of merchandise. Mr. Beecher taught us that the Crescent was the only
major store to survive the August 4, 1889 fire. The store reopened the
day after the fire. It was not at the Main Ave. location we knew as kids. Do
you know why the store was named "The Crescent?" It began in the
curved crescent-shaped building adjoining the Review Tower. Everything has
its season. The store was eventually acquired by an outside chain, Frederick
and Nelson, which went bankrupt. Today the site contains Crescent Court, a
new development having 20 specialty shops, a food court, meeting space, and
an exhibition area. I'll leave it to Spokane residents to say whether this
is a good thing. I was in Spokane two weeks ago. I drove past the Crescent
entrance. I wanted to go in, but I was on another errand. I imagined the
interior as it was in 1960.
Bon Marche
The Bon was Culbertsons as we were being born. Apparently the Bon Marche
chain of Seattle acquired it. Early on the Bon meant an animated Christmas
window containing the living Santa himself. I never saw its equal until I
visited Marshall Fields in Chicago years later. Later, the Bon meant Morey's
Model Shop to me. Morey was a bit of a curmudgeon, so I spread my business
around. He could have been the prototype for the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld. Once
I came into his shop with carrying a competitor's bag visibly containing
model plane tissue taped to balsa. "Is that the way they stuck up your
tissue?" he asked. I felt guilty for going to a competitor and angry at
him calling me on it.
My only other memory of the Bon was during my hiatus between
college and starting a 34 year hitch with IBM. I was looking at books on the
second floor when I became aware of somebody looking at me. "Are you Ed
Mauget? I'm Karen Korte." My former Cooper schoolmate and I caught each
other up on what we'd been doing since Rogers. We had been acquaintances,
not friends, but she gave me a ride home. I never saw her again. She died
awhile back.
Newberrys
I think Newberrys remodeled its store when were preschool age. I don't
remember the exact location of the hotdogs as you do. I remember the lunch
counter was a mob scene on Saturdays. You had to love the closeness of your
fellow human to eat there. I just returned from Guatemala where the natives
sat just as close to me while we ate together. The rest of the store seemed
to do a land office business too. I cannot account for Newberrys downtown
closing except for being the victim of the same empty downtown movement that
infected most of America.
Payless
Wasn't Payless unique? There were Payless stores all across the West, but
none could have had the quality of the Payless at Main and Post. The
basement was fun, but was a blatant firetrap that fortunately never burned.
Payless liked to bring in carnival-type attractions to advertise itself. I
remember a trailer of tiny horses the size of large spaniels. Another time a
dead sperm whale was parked outside on Main Ave. It wasn't completely
embalmed, and the month was July if you get my drift. The boat used in the
film African Queen was displayed in the same spot another time. I
remember pitchmen selling add-ons for cars in the parking lot at Main and
Lincoln.
Later Main and Lincoln would contain one of Spokane's many
pigeon-hole parking garages. As we entered Rogers, Woolworth rebuilt the
Payless patch of land... right?
Pigeon-Hole Parking
Wasn't pigeon-hole parking a creation of a Spokane inventor? Those decks
sprang up overnight across downtown. The garages lasted about ten years or
less. I assume that they damaged cars and required skilled attendants, or
those decks would be all across America today. I noticed a small spin-off in
New Orleans four years ago. Those decks were just two layers high.
Each stall had its own hoist. An attendant had to drive the bottom car away
to free up space to lower the top car.
Post Office The post office at Riverside and Lincoln is one of my early memories,
going back to toddler years. My mother used to sit me on the glass-topped
tables while she addressed envelopes. A blind man sold magazines and and
candy bars at the front of the 'L'-shaped public area. I am amazed to find a
Post Office having the exact floor plan in Raleigh, NC. It even has the
glass-topped tables. The next time I went to Spokane after finding it, I
checked its post office. Everything compared, but both buildings look old
and dingy inside.
Kress
Kress had a tin ceiling that resembled that of an ice cream parlor. To the
right of the entrance was a stairway leading to the best year-around stock
of toys in Spokane. A mirror-image stair was a the diagonal rear corner of
the store. The toys bore the made-in-Japan mark. That was a sign of cheap
junk then, but I liked it all. I found an identical Kress store in
Asheville, NC this year. They sell art on the main floor and basement. The
rest is divided into expensive condos with a view of the Smokies. Their tin
ceiling is still there.
W.T. Grant
This store was a Johnny-come-lately. It probably opened about 1954. It
competed with Newberrys -- unsuccessfully, I think. Later, another location
opened at Northtown, back when that was a strip mall. Once, I wedged my heel
against the back step of the down escalator to see whether my foot or the
escalator would break first. You're right, I wasn't too bright. The
escalator said uncle first. The step derailed at a crazy angle. You could
hear the snap all over the main floor. I thought I'd spend the rest of my
life at Walla Walla, but instead, the store personnel fawned all over me. I
didn't know about fear of frivolous lawsuits then.
Grants had a third floor used as a stockroom. One Christmas
... maybe their first ... they cordoned it off into a Santa's North Pole
Toyland. They used candy-striped wall paper and candy canes to decorate. I
thought it was kind of neat, so of course they never did it again.
I sought employment at the employment agency the summer of
my 16th year. I said I'd do anything except wash dishes. You're
right, the next day I was washing dishes. It was at the W.T. Grant lunch
counter. I did this in lieu of study hall when school started. I worked all
day Saturday during my junior and senior years. This kept me out of most
extra curricular activities. <<< Note: I regret
this, so I belatedly run this Website >>> I even
worked at Grants the summer after my freshman year in college.
Remember the conveyer belt that delivered hamburgers on the top and returned
dirty dishes on the bottom? I was the recipient of the dirty dishes. I felt
like Lucy in a kind of reversed chocolate factory. The belt stretched from
the rear of the store to the front along the west wall. I had to repair it
from time-to time.
I used to change clothes on the third floor or run up there
to a wire cage to get soufflé cups or bulk Coke syrup. The candy-striped
Christmas wallpaper from that one year of third-floor Toyland was still
there.
The first day at dishwashing was hell. I had to keep up with
a steady stream of full bus pans coming off the belt. Grants was having a 35
cent banana split special. It was hot outside so it was hard to maintain a
clean banana split dish inventory. It was unbearably hot at my end of the
kitchen. I had to simultaneously feed the dishwasher, return empty bus pans,
empty the dishwasher, return clean dishes and silverware, make coffee, peel
potatoes, and wash pots and pans. At closing I had to clean the whole mess
along with four stainless steel coffee creamers, scrape the grill so shiny
it would rust by morning, and mop the lunch counter area that ran the depth
of the store. I had to do this quickly or the young managers waiting to
close the store and have a beer would be angry. I had to do it right, or Lil,
the gigantic lady lunch counter manager would thump me on the helmet the
next day. On Saturdays, I had to peel 100 lbs of potatoes in addition. I
found that even menial jobs can be difficult at first but that one can take
pride in learning to do something well, no matter how humble the task. I
learned a lesson at W.T. Grant. Do well that which you do not want to do.
Wards
This store was not interesting to me, but thinking back, what a killer view
of the falls was beside it. I looked at the building on October 8th. What a
fine location across the from the statues of runners.
Sears The downtown Sears parking lot had to have the best view of any Sears in
the USA. We pretty much took those falls for granted, but we were wrong.
Years later, the river became recognized for the asset it is.
I remember outboard motors running in barrels of water near
the store in the parking lot. I remember vacuum cleaners balancing beach
balls on their streams of air. I went to Santa in the basement. The toys
were good during Christmas at Sears. Remember the catalog? We waited all
Fall for it. I bought shoes from a 7th grade teacher at Cooper one summer.
He x-rayed my feet. I remember seeing my skeleton feet. I could die from
cancer because of 50's ignorance about radiation.
Sears is now the library. That spectacular view is now the
enemy of anyone wanting to read a book while glancing out a third-floor
window a the magnificent view of the river. There are rumblings about the
building becoming a condominium.
J.C. Pennies
Most of my wardrobe, such as it was, came from Pennies. I remember a huge
picture of J.C. himself on the main floor. A boring place to me.
Grahams
This prototype of "If its Paper" was a neat store for anyone
having an artistic bent. It was near the BandBox theater on Sprague, close
to the Fox Theater and the Davenport Hotel.
Skywalks
I've seen large arrays of skywalks in other cities, such as Minneapolis and
Rochester, MN. I was excited when I first returned to find them in Spokane.
The Bon Marche and Nordstrom are glued together by a string of specialty
stores and restaurants in Riverpark Square. The skywalks connect more than
15 bocks of downtown. Again I'll leave it to the residents as to whether
this is a good thing. I would point out that most other cities lost their
original downtown assets too, but in many instances nothing has replaced
them, leaving only decay.
Streetcars
I remember seeing streetcar tracks embedded in some streets in Spokane. I
believe the Monroe St hill had them embedded in original bricks as we grew
up. I saw my first streetcar in Portland in 1948. I wanted us to have them.
I was not to experience them until I moved to San Francisco. Now I hear that
there are fake streetcars running around downtown. I've seen these in places
such as San Juan, PR. You just hop on and get off at will. Makes getting
around a concentrated area nice. It's not the real thing, but it helps the
quality of the area.
Davenport
I agree with you about the Davenport. I have less of a history there than
you. It was the really nice hotel in Spokane. Again, I felt that this was
the way New York City was, when I walked into the lobby. I visited the
remodeled Davenport on October 9th. The fountain and fish are there, but not
the birds (yet). It is nicer than ever.
Ridpath
The Ridpath was okay, but my primary association with the Ridpath is one
whale of a successful 40th reunion in the annex. I remember when the
Ridpath burned about 1948. We could see it from 1112 E. Hoffman Avenue,
a block from Rogers. I learned a new phrase that evening: three-alarm fire.
Compared to other cities I was to visit later, Spokane's
downtown was huge for the size of the city. Thanks to Spokane City Lines,
downtown was a rich part of my life, growing up in Spokane.
