Ghosts and Legends of Spokane by Deborah Cuyle

Author:Deborah Cuyle [Cuyle, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, General
ISBN: 9781467146357
Google: -Xg6EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2021-01-15T02:41:45+00:00

A panoramic view of the haunted Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane, 1896. Library of Congress.

The Davenport Hotel takes the lead in Spokane’s haunted history, along with the Patsy Clark mansion. The grand establishment at 807 West Sprague was designed by Llewellyn Marks “Louis” Davenport (1868–1951), who was also the proprietor. It is said to be haunted by two ghosts, but the most prominent is that of Mr. Davenport, who still roams the halls at 3:00 a.m. to check on guests and make sure his hotel is running smoothly. It is believed his spirit still resides in his old room, no. 1105, where he and his wife lived until both their deaths.

The other spirit is that of Ellen O’Donovan McNamara (1852–1920), who plunged to her death from the skylights at age sixty-eight. The story goes Ellen was traveling with her cousins and they were having dinner together when Ellen complained she wasn’t feeling well. She excused herself and said she needed some fresh air…and that was her last breath.

Was it suicide? Murder? The world will never know, but her ghost continues to haunt the hotel to this day.

The Davenport family moved from New York to California in the mid-1800s, when Louis was just seven years old. As a teenager, Louis moved to Spokane in March 1889 and began working at the Pride of Seattle restaurant, located on Howard Street near the corner of Riverside (later destroyed by a fire).

It is reported that Davenport came to Spokane with a mere $1.50 in his pocket and later became listed as one of Spokane’s millionaires (another rags-to-riches story!). He began his career in Spokane with the idea of a waffle stand after the fire in 1889, and thus began the Davenport Waffle Foundry, which consisted of just two tents and some used furniture, really. The devastating fire would not break Davenport’s business sense or spirit down, although it did destroy virtually the entire city. This mindset is what eventually made Davenport one of the richest men in Spokane.

Davenport was interviewed about the aftermath and the quick rebuilding of businesses in tents on January 1, 1903, in the Spokesman-Review:

The day after the fire a large part of the population of Spokane took to cotton duck. Tents were pitched on every vacant lot.…The hotel proprietors were hard put to accommodate their regular guests, to say nothing of the multitude of homeless men and women turned adrift by the disaster. Scores of hotels and lodging houses were set up under canvas. Some of these came to be very imposing affairs. Good accommodations in these canvas hotels cost from fifty cents to two dollars a night.

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