Then and Now: Riegel Brothers Dodge

The first automobiles appeared in Spokane in the late 1890s, but in the teens and 1920s, the demand for autosvehicles caused dealerships, repair facilities and parts warehouses to flourish in the western downtown area, mostly around the railroad tracks and First and Second Avenues. That area was the first place to be nicknamed “auto row.”

Among the first generation of dealerships there were Willys-Overland Pacific, Finlay-Studebaker, Chandler Auto, Eldridge Buick, Twitchell Motors and Wells Chevrolet.

Dee R. Riegel, born around 1887, and brother Guy E. Riegel, born around 1884, in Nebraska came to Spokane in 1910. Together, they formed an auto business, Riegel Bros. Agency in 1912, first building a taxi business, then a car sales business. They started one of the first Dodge dealerships in the western states at the corner of First Avenue and Adams Street around 1918, where the business stayed for many decades.

Older brother Guy represented the industry at the Spokane Chamber of Commerce and at statewide lobbying and industry groups. He promoted car travel, and recommending people use campgrounds as a way to save money, in The Spokesman-Review in 1917, saying that because foreign travel was halted by World War I, domestic travel was the “ideal recreation” costing only the price of gas.

“Undoubtedly many more car owners would spend a week or two on the road each year,” said the car dealer.

Multiple auto businesses shared the 1300 block of West First, including Eldridge Buick, which built a massive, three-story building on the west end of the block. Eldridge sold used cars between their showroom and the Riegel brothers on that block, an area that is now the seven-story Parkview West apartments.

In 1936, Clayton and Lester Kauffman bought Eldridge Buick and renamed it Kauffman Buick.

Guy Riegel died in 1946.

In 1952, Fred C. Becker became a partner in Riegel-Becker Motors.

Lester Kauffman died in 1955, and Clayton Kauffman sold the business to his son Gordon Kauffman and a salesmean at the dealership, Becker, in 1964. The name of the business was changed to Becker Buick. The Buick dealership moved to East Sprague in the 1960s.

Becker had been in the car business since the early 1930s and had his own Dodge-Plymouth dealership in Walla Walla.

Dee Riegel died in 1969 at the age of 82.

Becker died in 1987.

– Jesse Tinsley

Captions:

1970s - These brick buildings, built sometime between 1914 and 1920, were associated with the Riegel brothers’ auto dealership at the corner of West First Avenue and South Adams Street on the west end of downtown Spokane, an area first dubbed “auto row” because of several dealerships that began and operated there. The Riegel brothers, Dee and Guy, started in auto sales around 1914 and ran one of the oldest Dodge and Plymouth dealerships in the country until Dee Riegel died in 1969 at the age of 82.

Present day: These two buildings at the corner of South Adams Street and West First Street were part of Riegel Brothers Dodge-Plymouth from around 1914 through the late 1960s. After the automotive businesses moved out, various businesses have used the property, including Password Incorporated and Spokane Ballet Studio.