Several years ago the Spokane Spokesman-Review began a series of articles featuring "before" and "after" photos of iconic buildings and structures in Spokane, including a short history of the item in question. The subject of the May 6, 2013 article was
Market Street in Hillyard. That article can be read further below.
When
James Jerome Hill, generally known as J.J., brought his
Great Northern Railway to Spokane, the decision was made to set up the railway shops, service center and roundhouse adjacent to what became the town of Hillyard, named, naturally enough, after J.J. himself, literally,
Hill's Yard. Platted in 1892, the same year the Great Northern began construction of its huge rail yard and locomotive shops, Hillyard remained a separate entity from Spokane until 1924, at which time it was annexed by Spokane.
Initially a small community of wooden, stick built shacks and business buildings, in the early twentieth century the prosperity brought about by the presence of the Great Northern yards gave rise to much new construction, primarily of much more substantial brick and stone buildings, forming the Hillyard business section we see today. Prosperity continued until the closing of the yards in the early 1980s, a culmination of the mergers of the Great Northern into the Burlington Northern Railroad and eventually the BNSF Railway, resulting on the relocation of the railroad yards to Yardley. The loss of their only industry to speak of created instant economic woes for Hillyard, which continue to this day, with its continuing to be the poorest neighborhood in the state of Washington.
The Hillyard Historic Business District proper is only about four blocks long and a single block wide, running along Market Street, bounded by Everett Avenue on the north and Wabash Avenue on the south. In the district are 19 contributing and 13 non-contributing resources.
Market Street in Hillyard
In 1892, James J. Hill, the architect and president of the Great Northern Railroad, arrived in Spokane. He told a newspaper reporter: “I am coming here to get your business and to carry your freight.” He was anxious to complete his company’s tracks through Spokane, already an important train hub of the northwest. As a shrewd businessman, Hill asked many landowners to donate right-of-way to finish his tracks, promising that Spokane’s notoriously high shipping rates would naturally fall. But when Hill finished his layout of tracks through the city, lower rates didn’t materialize. Hill built the Great Northern depot on a scenic spot by Spokane Falls in 1902 and battled competitors, government anti-trust agents and stockholders to build an empire that stretched from Minneapolis to the Pacific Ocean.
Hill put his railroad yards outside of the city to avoid city taxes. Around those yards, where locomotives were built and repaired, grew Hillyard, a blue collar neighborhood on the edge of town. When citizens pushed for incorporation, Hill, who ruled his empire from a luxury railroad car called The Manitoba, threatened to move the yards. Hill, nicknamed the “Empire Builder”, died in 1916. Hillyard became part of Spokane in 1924. Upon his retirement in 1912, he said, “Most men who have really lived have had, in some shape, their great adventure; this railway is mine.”
From the Spokane Spokesman-Review