Reading and Writing about Spokane

This week readings are about reading the community much like we are reading cemeteries for our paper. Chapter 9 in Nearby History describes the analysis of the cultural landscape, seperating it from the natural landscape and reading the development of a town by locating the "indicators of change" (179). I thought the authors make an important point about being careful when looking for symbolism in buildings and structures and instead encourage historians to look for "changes dictated by necessity" (186).

Many of the buildings historians will analyze are probably on the National Register for Historic Places. Chapter 10 describes the benefits and challanges to historic presertvation. There is an interesting balance between progress and remembering the past. It is important to remember history and the way life was before, but people also have to live their lives in the present and "the whole landscape cannot be locked in time" (199). The authors provide important information for not only people interested in historic preservation but for historians with their list of contact information. Historians, who might not be interested in preserving a certian piece of property, can use these sources when looking for information about a certian society's history.

The University of Wisconsin- Madison's information about reading landscapes will be very helpful when we start looking at the ghost signs in our section of Spokane. Though all of the information and advice is applicable to our project, the most helpful section is the Cities, Town, and Infrastructure. We will need to use all of our senses to get a feel for the neighborhood in the turn of the century so we can understand the context, though I would not recommend taking off your shoes so you can feel the concrete of the streets of Spokane under your feet. 

I have to admit, I did not enjoy John Fahey's essay When the Dutch Owned Spokane. This seemed to be a very important part in Spokane's history, redevelopment after the fire, but Fahey focuses on a business hisotry of the Dutch morgage firm, Northwestern and Pacific Hyoptheekbank and leaves discussion of its impact on Spokane for the last few paragraphs. He breifly states that because of Dutch investment, the city was able to recover so quickly, then adds, almost as if under his breath, that it would have happened anyway, just not quite as fast. He also comes just short of blaming the Dutch for the massive forclosures in the mid 1890's. I wish this essay would have examined the effect of the Dutch on the city of Spokane instead of focusing on the company and their financial history. It was nice to put the Dutch investors into context with the Spokane Historical stop of the Couer d'Alene Hotel.

Recovery after the 1889 fire. (image courtesy of The Spokesman-Review)

The advice given by Kyvig and Marty in Chapter 11 will be helpful, not only when we start to work on our projects, but when we work on any other historical paper or project. I know one of the problems I have when doing research is never taking notes on my sources, which the authors list as a "cardinal rule" (212). I always find myself frantically trying to remember a source for an important piece of information because I did not take correct notes.

I though the last chapter in Nearby History  was particularly interesting. It was a history of history and historians. It was interesting to see the development in the concentrations of studies change over time, based on what was happening in the present day. For example, the social-protest movements encouraged historians to study history through the lives of "ordinary people" and not just through the elite class. The best way to do this was making generalization through studies done in a concentrated area, local history, which was previously scoffed at by academic historians. Now the current emphasis in history is on the links between "elite culture and popular mass culture to social, economic and political developments"(251). Public History will play and important role in determining these links and presenting them to other historians and society.

Images and Artifacts of the Pacific Northwest

This week’s readings focus on images and artifacts. As public historians we will use artifacts and images a great deal, whether they are photographs, objects inside a display case, landscape structures or buildings. 

The Inland Northwest contains structures that are used as evidence of the growth and development of Spokane, from large mansions to public parks and structures left from Expo ’74.  In Henry Matthews' essay Kirtland Cutter: Spokane's Architect, Cutter drafts mansions for the rich investors who relocate to the Inland Northwest from the east coast. The large houses reaffirm that Spokane is an industrial and economic player in national affairs, like larger cities in the east and they could also have, "through Cutter's imagination and professional skill, the symbols of old wealth"(169) linking the old world with the frontier.  In J. Williams T. Youngs' essay Thinking Globally, Acting Locally, he discusses the efforts of local leaders to renew urban Spokane to give the city a stronger core. This essay is a great bookend to the story of Spokane's founding, development, growth, decline and ultimately urban renewal and "federalization" through Expo '74. The focus of the expo on environmentalism was supported internationally and nationally, giving Spokane the opportunity to be  a cause of global change, instead of reacting to it.

The next couple of chapters in Thrush's book explore the next step of Seatle's transformation on the eve of the Second World War. He points out how native images are used by urban Seattle to connect them with their “place story” even though the native people no longer had an active role in the historical interpretation. Seattle became "a city that used Indian images and stories to make sense of itself, real Native people, and especially those not affiliated with totem poles, were pushed to the margins of urban society"(149-150). The retelling of Seattle’s history was taken up by two different organizations with differing viewpoints. The Pioneers wanted to remember the times before urban expansion and keep alive the connection to the Denny landing and first settlers. They used the memories of the local natives to supplement their narration of the past. The Tilikums used Indian imagery to tell their version of local imperial history and promote their social organization. The actual indigenous population had either moved outside the city or became absorbed into urban society. Their images, however distorted, remain as their representatives to the land that was once theirs.

Pictures used in the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific-Expedition. The top photo is the Spokane building. (courtesy of Wiki Images)

The analysis of photographs discussed in Nearby History is important for our project because we will use them to research our buildings. I thought it was interesting how Kyvig and Marty showed how photographs were edited even before Photoshop. I would have never considered looking for evidence of editing when studying older photographs. Artifacts are also important to Public Historians because we will use them to bring history to the public. I was also not aware of the newer discipline of Industrial Archaeology. The time period of most of our ghost signs will be from is the period of industrial growth in Spokane.

I enjoyed looking at the ghost signs in San Francisco. My favorite was the second slide with the letter “O.” I feel like that one would be fun and challenging to research. It almost looks like a sign for a hotel that was housed inside the building, but you never know. A couple of the ghost signs they found were in great shape. I wonder if they were redone or just preserved well?

Transition and Development of the Northwest

The essays in Stratton’s anthology, written by Wayne Ramussen and Carlos Schwantes explain two sides of growth and development of the city of Spokane. Ramussen’s essay, A Century of Farming in the Inland Empire, explores the West Plains’ evolution and settlement through agriculture. He links the economic success of the city with the progression of farming on the Palouse, demonstrating how “Spokane is so closely tied to the fortunes of agriculture” (136). He links the Inland Empire to the rest of the nation by showing how the recessions of the 1890’s and 1930’s affected the farmers and settlers of the Palouse and therefore the city of Spokane.

            Schwantes’ essay, A Labor History to World War I, explores the development of Spokane through labor trends, showing how this “economic colony” (145) was different then the rest of the west. The biggest adjustment in the growth of industry was the transition from subsistence settlers and wageworkers and Spokane’s isolation from the rest of the country created a sense of community united in their resistance to exploitation from outsiders. Though Spokane experiences the same challenges as the rest of the country in the fifty years prior to WWI, “Spokane’s local and regional circumstances uniquely shaped worker’s responses to those experiences” (156).

            Also in Stratton’s anthology is Ruth Moynihan’s essay, Let Women Vote: Abigail Scott Duniway in Washington Territory, discussing the unique impact of women’s suffrage on the Northwest, especially in Washington which because of her efforts and following passed women’s suffrage ten years earlier than the rest of the nation. This essay and the two previously discussed will come in particularly handy When studying “ghost signs” around Spokane because many of the buildings and major industries were being built around the time of some of our “ghost signs.” We know have a background of the economic and social development happening during this time period.

Birds eye view of Seattle 1908 (courtesy of wiki images)

     Coll Thrush, in Native Seattle, gives us another example of a developing and changing society in the west. The next three chapters discuss the same time period as the essays in Stratton’s anthology, the fifty years around the turn of the century. He shows the evolution of the city from urban and indigenous populations living side by side to the eventual incorporation of the native population who start functioning as important parts of the urban society. Eventually the native population, who are not absorbed into the growing urban society of Seattle, disappears, making room for the white urban leaders to use this as evidence of superiority. They also start to take advantage of esoteric native traditions and culture involving natives into the urban framework, but only in places designated by the urban whites. It is ironic how white elites used their collection of native artifacts as a status symbol and natives used material goods they would by in the city as a status symbol.

            The use of unpublished documents and oral history discussed in Nearby History, will become pertinent in our research of Spokane’s "ghost signs." In our research on the buildings, neighborhoods and people we will use the census records to discover a context for our signs. I though it was important that the authors pointed out how the vital records could contain errors. Oral history might be used in our research when we interview business owners and people who used to live in the neighborhood.  

Story of a Place

As a fairly new resident to Spokane, my knowledge of Northwestern history is minimal. The two books we started reading this week seem to provide a perfect overview of the “place-story,” as Coll Thrush describes in his book Native Seattle, of the Northwest from both sides of the Cascades.

Thrush explains how “throughout Seattle’s past, the strands of urban and Indian History have been entwined,” (13) and the history of Seattle is incomplete with out the inclusion of Native history and acknowledgment of their influence. I found it interesting how he points out how the history of a place is often told in two different tales. The first is through Native history, often disappearing with the older generations no longer around to keep it alive and the second is through urban history, beginning with white settlement of the area at which point, the native peoples disappears from the land and its history. Thrush brings the native peoples back into the history of Seattle giving us a better understanding of the region’s origins and development.

(courtesy of University Libraries, University of Washington Digital Collections)

David Stratton’s anthology, Spokane and the Inland Empire, examines slices of the Inland Northwest’s history starting with Donald Meining’s essay Spokane and the Inland Empire: Historical Geographic Systems and a Sense of Place. Meining explores what is means to be “from somewhere” stating “the geographical identity we have given ourselves becomes a means by which others may tentatively categorize us” (16). I have experienced how others use the place we are from to define us. They look at our home, and see its history as our history, take characteristics of that place, and use them to find familiarity and make connections. Meining explores the growth and development of Spokane and the Inland Empire displaying its roots in imperialism and Manifest Destiny, growth through mining and railroads, a bridge between the Midwest and the pacific and finally Nationalization. With his exploration of the history of Spokane, he relates one of the “least known cities and regions in all of America” to the rest of the country. The next two essays, Henry Rice’s essay Native American Dwellings of the Southern Plateau and Clifford Trafzer’s essay The Palouse Indians: Interpreting the Past of a Plateau Tribe, examine the native background of the region providing interpretations of the area’s history through their perspective instead of the white settlers point of view. I am still not sure how Rice’s essay will fit into the larger picture of the anthology, but we still have seven more chapters to read.

            Chapters 3 and 4 of Nearby History are a perfect guide for researching and using sources for our project. Stratton’s anthology and Thrush’s book are great secondary sources providing the background necessary to begin researching the “ghost signs” of Spokane. Kyvig and Marty’s explanation of finding historical traces around us will come in handy with our analyses and their discussion of sources is a great guide for deciding what primary sources to use and where to look. Though the history of the Northwest has not been a particular interest of mine, I look forward to learning more about my temporary home and using Nearby History as a guide to start researching Spokane’s “ghost signs.”

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