The Davenport Hotel (Spokane, Washington)

Lewellyn "Louis" Davenport came to Spokane Falls, Washington Territory, in the spring of 1889 at the age of 20. He had been a clerk in San Francisco and came up to Spokane to work the summer in his uncle's "Pride of Spokane Restaurant." The summer of 1889 was fateful for Spokane and for Louis Davenport. In August, a fire tore through the infant metropolis, turning 32 square blocks of civilization to ashes. Young Davenport salvaged what he could from the rubble, bought a tent, and opened "Davenport's Waffle Foundry." Davenport's restaurant is one of the possible places where the first Crab Louis (reportedly named after Louis Davenport) was created and served.[6] Spokane rebuilt quickly after the big fire. Washington became a state that winter and Spokane dropped the Falls from its name. With timber, mining, agriculture and the railroad pouring money and people into the region, the city of Spokane was in the middle of it all and poised to become one of the great cities of the West.

Davenport recognized his opportunity and leased a brick building on the North-east corner of Sprague Avenue and Post Street the next year. He expanded his culinary offerings to nearly 100 items. Within a few years, Davenport's Restaurant was described by a critic as "the finest thing of the kind in the country." Business was so good, Davenport expanded into an adjoining building within a decade. He hired up-and-coming architect, Kirtland Cutter, to make the two buildings appear as one in 1904. Cutter offered a Mission Revival style theme. The white stucco walls and green tile roofs stood in marked contrast to every other building downtown.[7] This remodel added the finest ballroom in the West on the second floor, the Hall of the Doges.

The Davenport, circa 1916

The Davenport Hotel was neither Louis Davenport's idea nor was it built with his money. Instead, Cutter and his firm, Cutter & Malmgren and Davenport were chosen by a group of leading Spokane businessmen, who thought the growing city required a large, grand hotel in which to board and entertain their guests. Leveraging Davenport's already strong reputation, the Davenport Hotel Company was formed in 1912 and preparation of the site began that year. The hotel tower went up in eight months in 1913, using horse carts, steam jacks and hand tools. Not a single worker was seriously injured or killed — a rarity for the time.

In the design, Cutter was instructed to make sure "no more money than necessary was squandered on exterior ornament", which resulted in a building with a relatively simple exterior with strategically placed ornamentation but an extremely extravagant interior.[4] Built lavishly in the Renaissance Revival and Spanish Revival style, the 406-room Davenport Hotel cost two million dollars to complete and included new technologies at the time of its opening in September 1914, such as chilled water, elevators, and air cooling.[4] Cutter and Davenport shopped the world for ideas and furnishings for their new hotel.[7] Cutter, Karl G. Malmgren as well as the firm's superintendent of construction on the project, Gustav Albin Pehrson, designed the space drawing inspiration from the great architects of France, England and Spain and decorated the interior with luxurious appointments with fine art and tables dressed in Irish linens from Liddell and set with 15,000 pieces of silver (said to be the largest private commission for Reed & Barton).[8][9] The hotel opened for business on September 1, 1914, and held its grand opening celebrations from September 17–19, 1914.[10] Ever since then, the hotel has promoted itself as "one of America's exceptional hotels."

Ornate main lobby

The ornate hotel lobby has been referred to as "Spokane's living room", and in a 1921 edition of The Architect and Engineer the lobby was applauded by the author stating, there are "few if any finer lobbies in America".[4][11] The first fire in the lobby fireplace was lit in September 1914 by Kirtland Cutter. Hotel proprietor Louis Davenport decreed that as a symbol of hospitality. Originally wood-burning, the fireplace now burns natural gas. The fireplace is kept burning year-round, as a symbol of hospitality and still following Mr. Davenport's request. The painting above the fireplace depicts the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María - the ships Christopher Columbus used to discover the New World in 1492. Architecturally, the hotel has elements of Italy, France, England, Spain, and Imperial Russia.[7]

The lobby is inspired by the Spanish Renaissance style. The art glass panels in the ceiling give the hotel's single largest space an atrium effect. There is a separate glass roof above this one for protection.[7] The ceiling beams are cast plaster with faux wood graining. Over time, much of the detail on these was lost to the eye due to decades of smoke in the lobby - both from the wood-burning fireplace and cigars/cigarettes. When the beams were cleaned in the renovation of 2000 - with spray bottles of Simple Green and toothbrushes - the burgundy, teal, and gold colors appeared as they were when new.[7]

Mr. Davenport explained the hotel's iconography this way in 1915:

In the old Spanish homes it was the custom to display medallions carrying the portraits of honored ancestors and distinguished members of the family. This accounts for their frequent appearance throughout the lobby. Prominent in the ornamentation is the griffin. This, as used here, has the body of a lion, symbolic of strength, and the wings and head of an eagle, emblematic of alertness, swiftness and rapidity of execution. The dolphin, which figures in the ornamentation is always associated with mythology and sociability.[7]

Depiction of Davenport's Restaurant, ca. 1912

The Davenport Hotel at Post and First, 2015

The hotel was so successful that a 53-room addition was constructed in 1917, followed by an eleven-story addition on the south side in 1929, containing 80 more rooms.[10]

The Davenport Hotel was home to one of the Pacific Northwest's earliest commercial radio stations. KHQ, which signed on the air in Seattle in late February 1922,[12] was relocated to Spokane in September 1925,[13] and went on the air from the Davenport on October 30 of that year.[14][15] From its tower on the roof of the hotel, KHQ broadcast the first voices many people pulled from the air across the vast expanses of the Inland Northwest. KHQ featured many popular local bands, including Brill's Orchestra, led by cellist Leonardo Brill; his band, which was heard on radio on numerous occasions, performed for KHQ during the station's debut program.[14] Also noteworthy were The Musicaladers, which included a young Harry "Bing" Crosby. KHQ radio remained a strong voice on the air for more than half a century; it was sold off by its original owners in 1985 and is today's KQNT, though later sister television station KHQ-TV remains under the same ownership.

In 1928, Louis Davenport bought out the hotel's other stockholders. On April 26, 1945, Davenport sold the hotel and the restaurant to the William Edris Company of Seattle, for $1.5 million.[10] Edris sold the property two years later, in 1947, to a group of three Spokane investors. The following year, two of them sold their interest to three other investors. Seattle-based Western Hotels bought out three of the investors in 1949, and bought out the fourth investor in 1953. Davenport died in his suite at the hotel in 1951; his wife Verus in 1967.

Western Hotels remodeled the Davenport in the early 1960s and re-positioned it as a motel, with a motor entrance. In 1967, the owners, by that point renamed Western International Hotels, sold the Davenport to San Francisco-based John S. McMillan for $2.6 million.[10] McMillan sold the hotel two years later, in 1969, to Basin Industries, which announced renovation plans, but then went bankrupt in 1972 when one of its owners was convicted of securities fraud. The hotel was foreclosed on by their lenders, Dallas-based Lomas & Nettleton, one of the nation's largest mortgage bankers. In 1979, former Montana governor Tim Babcock bought the hotel for $4.25 million, along with Warren Anderson, a former General Manager of the hotel. Anderson sold his interest to Babcock in 1983. Babcock had to surrender ownership of the financially ailing property back to Lomas & Nettleton in 1985, which closed the hotel immediately. Lomas & Nettleton went bankrupt in 1989.[16]

Demolition of the hotel was considered. By the time the Davenports' only son died in 1987, it was generally believed that the Davenport Hotel would be destroyed. A demolition crew determined the entire block could be dropped in 20 seconds. The asbestos abatement industry was still in its early years, though, and it was then considered cost-prohibitive to clear the property of all asbestos, then raze the building without incurring a significant loss on the sale of the real estate after.[17] A citizens' group called Friends of the Davenport was founded in 1986 by City Council member (and future Spokane mayor) Sheri Barnard, with the goal of saving the hotel.[17] They held annual fund raisers in the lobby of the shuttered hotel and sought a buyer to restore it. In 1990, they found a potential savior, in Hong Kong businessman Patrick Wai-Meng Ng. His Sun International Hotels & Properties bought the hotel for $5.25 million. Ng began phased renovations, including the restoration of the lobby's skylight, but was unable to reopen the property.[18][17]

The restored Davenport Hotel is an integral part of the Davenport Arts District in Downtown Spokane

In March 2000, local entrepreneurs Walt & Karen Worthy purchased the entire city block for $6.5 million, then spent two years and $38 million ($61.8 million in 2022 dollars) of their own money to restore The Davenport. The hotel's public spaces and ballrooms were restored to their original appearance, with real gold leaf around the fireplace.[7] The hotel's guest floors were stripped to bare concrete and rebuilt, with fresh wiring, plumbing, drywall, furniture and fixtures. Salvaging the Hall of Doges from the old structure required the removal of the whole ballroom intact by crane and placing it on the second floor of the hotel's new east addition just outside the Grand Pennington ballroom.

The Davenport Hotel reopened on July 15, 2002 and celebrated its grand reopening from September 13–15, 2002[19] with the ringing of a ship's bell eight times signaling a change of the watch.

In literature, the Davenport Hotel is the setting for an interview of a suspect by private investigator, Sam Spade in the 1930 novel, The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.[24] Hammett was also a real life visitor of the hotel.