Paths To Our Past Spokane’s Rockwood-Highland Area Entertains Mother’s Day Historic Preservation Tour

Living in an old house “adds another layer to our lives,” observes Susan Johnson.

“It ties us together with the long line of those who came before us, and those who will come after we’re gone.

“It’s exciting to be part of history,” says the Spokane School District special education administrator.

She and her husband, builder Dave Johnson, along with five other Rockwood-Highland neighborhood couples, will share their enthusiasm for Spokane’s history by opening their doors to the public for the Mother’s Day Historic Preservation Tour from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Sponsored by the Eastern Washington State Historical Society, the self-guided tour costs $10 per person. Tickets are available at Cheney Cowles Museum, 2316 W. First, and at Hutton Elementary School, 908 E. 24th, after 11:30 a.m. Sunday.

Spokane Transit trolleys will provide free transportation along the 1-1/2-mile route.

The Rockwood Addition, bounded by 14th and 29th avenues and Arthur and Hatch streets, must have looked like a sure bet when entrepreneur Jay P. Graves proposed the new neighborhood back in 1907.

Spokane’s population was booming - almost tripling from 36,848 in 1900 to 104,402 by 1910 - and wealth was pouring into the city from the region’s mines, forests and railroads.

Graves sought the advice of one of the nation’s premier landscape architects, Bostonian John Olmsted, whose respect for the site’s rugged terrain is reflected in the street names: Upper Terrace, Crest Road, Highland Boulevard, Overbluff and, of course, Rockwood Boulevard.

“The boulevards in this addition will be finer than anything in the Northwest,” promotional literature promised. “The building restrictions will keep out all but expensive homes, and any stable or garage built upon this property will have to be the same style architecture as the house.”

Ornate stone towers with conic shake roofs marked the entrance to Rockwood and Highland boulevards, and streetcar service extended throughout the neighborhood.

John Fahey’s book, “Shaping Spokane: Jay P. Graves and His Times,” recounts the era when eager real estate companies “ran touring autos along downtown streets (and) barkers offered to drive prospects immediately to see homesites.”

Initially, sales were brisk. Rockwood lots ranged from $2,000 and $3,000 to $8,000 for choice corner sites.

But the euphoria ended abruptly. The economy slowed. Spokane’s population leveled off. Building permits plunged, and the local housing market slid into a 30-year slump.

In 1918 Graves was forced to auction lots in the Manito Park and Rockwood districts. By the early 1920s, perimeter sites worth $800 a decade earlier went begging for as little as $35. A large advertisement in the downtown public library’s Northwest Room collection, dated May 26, 1926, announces the “Great Sacrifice Sale” of 36 parcels in the Rockwood Terrace Section.

Yet economic doldrums couldn’t diminish what Olmsted had envisioned: a charming neighborhood of winding streets flanked by oaks, maples, hawthorns and pines, where harsh topography was embraced as an opportunity to interact architecturally with nature.

A few with money had built as soon as roads were paved in 1911, and continued to build in the Rockwood area for the next 50 years. Others of more modest means bought secondary lots and occupied an assortment of comfortable homes, from Prairie bungalows and Spanish eclectic to more modern variations on traditional styles.

Even Graves eventually joined the neighborhood. Forced to sell Waikiki, his estate on the Little Spokane River, Graves in 1937 built a 12-room French eclectic residence for himself at 1821 S. Upper Terrace, overlooking Rockwood Boulevard.

Another stop on Sunday’s tour is the stone-and-timber retirement cottage designed by and built for architect Harold Whitehouse. Visitors may be struck by the similarities between the home at 730 E. Plateau, and Whitehouse’s most famous commission: the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist.

The home’s varnished built-ins, its ceiling treatment, the windows and doors and entry tiles … even the copper gutters suggest a link with St. John’s, which was under construction when the home was built in 1948.

“We sometimes tease our friends and say he must have overordered for the church,” jokes current owner Rick Reiger, who purchased the two-bedroom house with his wife, Sarah Carlson-Reiger, eight years ago.

Since then, the couple added a two-story addition to the detached shop Whitehouse used for drafting.

Among the home’s unusual features is radiant-floor heat, a system Reiger describes as incredibly cozy, “but if it ever goes out, I’m in a world of hurt.”

Not to worry, though, Reiger insists. “My wife says she can feel Harold keeping an eye on the house.”

Reiger says the house was in excellent shape when he and his wife bought it.

The Johnsons weren’t so lucky.

“Dave was the one who fell in love with this house,” recalls Susan. “The kids’ reaction was, ‘We’re not buying it, are we?”’

That was seven years and countless hours of “sweat equity” ago.

“It’s been like a second job, working evenings and weekends,” Susan says. “Gradually we learned that every repair takes three times as long and costs three times as much as we estimated.”

Layers of wallpaper had to go, along with decades of filth. Missing light fixtures needed replacement, and a kitchen “modernization” required undoing.

The result, though, justifies the ordeal. The first floor at 804 E. 26th is as inviting as it must have been when the first owners moved in 85 years ago. The dining room is particularly handsome, with forest-green walls and matching floral wallpaper framed by dark mahogany trim.

Susan enjoys hearing the anecdotes of gray-haired guests who remember playing in the sitting room or bounding up the stairs as children.

“In a way,” she says, “houses like this belong to the whole city.”

And thanks to the generosity of the Johnsons and other Mother’s Day Tour participants, for a few hours Sunday afternoon, six of Spokane’s historic homes will.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Color Photos Graphic: Mother’s Day Home Tour