To spot The Davenport Hotel, just look straight ahead for a tall, stately red brick building with a bright white stone base, intricate details along its lower floors, and a classic black and gold canopy above its entrance.
Take a moment to soak in this incredible sight, because you’re standing in front of one of Spokane’s most storied survivors: The Davenport Hotel! Let your imagination step back to 1889, when a young Louis Davenport arrives fresh from San Francisco-just as a massive fire roars through Spokane Falls, reducing the city to ashes. Picture smoke, rubble, and a 20-year-old Louis, rolling up his sleeves. Instead of heading for home, he grabs a tent, some salvaged dishes, and opens a “Waffle Foundry” right here in the heart of the rebuilding city.
Fast forward a few years, and his little eatery becomes the “finest thing of the kind in the country,” famous for elegant feasts and, rumor has it, one of the first ever Crab Louis salads-a dish so good they named it after the man himself. Meanwhile, the city is booming with timber, mines, and the railroad. Spokane needs a gathering place, something grand. So, with local businessmen pooling their fortunes, they convince Louis to lend his name and architect Kirtland Cutter his genius. By 1914, after an epic construction marathon filled with horse carts and steam jacks (not a hard hat in sight, yet miraculously not one worker injured), the Davenport Hotel opens its ornate doors.
From the outside, Cutter followed strict instructions: don’t spend a penny more than necessary on decoration. But inside? That’s a different world. Marble columns, soaring ceilings with colorful faux-wood beams, art glass skylights-the lobby is so dazzling it’s nicknamed “Spokane’s Living Room.” You can almost hear the clatter of silverware on linen-draped tables and the steady hum of excited conversation. The fireplace in the lobby was lit on opening day, 1914, and it’s burned ever since-year-round, rain or snow, in a tradition of hospitality.
Louis had an eye for style, mixing Italian, French, English, and Spanish touches, and filling these halls with griffins, dolphins, and even painted medallions-nearly royal, even if the only actual king who ever visited was just a little less famous than the ten U.S. presidents who stayed here. President Taft, for instance, called this place “home”-and let’s be honest, any hotel that keeps Taft happy probably has very comfortable chairs.
Over the years, celebrities like Bing Crosby, Mary Pickford, Betty White, and even Babe Ruth wandered these corridors. Radio history was made from a tower on the roof when KHQ brought music and voices-sometimes young Bing himself-out across the Northwest. Poets scribbled verse by the fireplace, and in classic hotel fashion, legends grew wild: stories that Mahatma Gandhi stayed here (spoiler: he didn’t), and that Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade interrogated suspects right in this very lobby.
But fortunes rise and fall-by the 1960s, the Davenport was turned into a motel, and as time ticked on, it slipped into disrepair. By the 1980s, this beautiful building was almost rubble. An entire block, ready to fall in just twenty seconds-except nobody could afford to take out the asbestos, so the poor grand old place just waited. But Spokane wasn’t letting go that easily. Citizens rallied, fundraisers were held, dreams of restoration flickered like a stubborn ember. Finally, Walt and Karen Worthy swooped in, spending millions to peel away the grime, restore gold leaf, and save even the fabulously named Hall of Doges by lifting it out with a crane. When The Davenport Hotel reopened in 2002, bells rang in victory, and Spokane had her “living room” back.
Today, the Historic Davenport dazzles guests with nearly 300 rooms, two grand restaurants, a spa, and enough stories to fill a novel-or maybe several. So, step a little closer to those heavy doors. Can you feel the echoes of laughter, clinking glasses, and the secrets of over a century swirling around? That’s The Davenport: Spokane’s palace of dreams-where history is always on the house.
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