Washington Broom Factory - Spokane, WA - Converted Factories on Waymarking.com

The new building he planned was fifty feet by fifty feet and three stories in height, with a basement. He bought all new electronic powered machinery from the east coast. He planned to use the first floor for manufacturing, and the basement to store broom corn. The factory produced up to six hundred full sized brooms and as many whisk brooms a day. It was the largest and only complete broom factory between Minneapolis and the Pacific coast. A large warehouse was maintained in connection to the factory, and the business employed eighteen men. The monthly payroll was fifteen hundred dollars. The goods were sold locally out of the warehouse and shipped from the factory to a wide area all over the northwest states. The goods were sold as far east as Butte and Anaconda, Montana; north in British Columbia; south to the Palouse area of southeastern Washington; and west to Wenatchee and North Yakima.

The Gustav Meese Washington Broom Factory sits on the corner of Oak Street and Sinto Avenue in the West Central neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. This three-story building and basement rises off of a stone and mortar foundation to a flat roof. Walls consist of brick and frame construction with brick cladding. The brick is medium red in color and laid in an American bond. The interior structure is comprised of a wood post-and-beam framing commonly used in Spokane at this time. The exterior appearance of the building is linear and plain, with only corbelled brick creating a corbel table at the cornice, and minimal painted advertisements or ornamentation. The fenestration is symmetrical on the two upper floors and asymmetrical on the first floor, due to the placement of double-sized freight doorways and single doorways intermingled with the windows. The facade of the building has six bays, with the second and fifth bays serving as entrances to the first floor. The west elevation mirrors the primary facade on the upper two floors, and has only four bays on the street level.

Three features are common to the entire building. These are the cornice, the segmentally arched window and door treatments, and a painted band surrounding the building. The cornice, is composed of corbelled brick, which creates a corbel table at the roof line. The cornice continues from the primary facade around the building, except on the east elevation. Windows are four-over- four, double-hung sash. The lintels for both the double and single wide doors are also segmentally arched. A light colored painted bands surrounds the entire building, beginning above the third story windows and continuing to midpoint of the cornice.

One feature on the building, which no research could explain, is the function of some odd sized openings that have all been bricked up. These undetermined openings are the width of double doors, yet they are located two feet above the floor line. The east side of the building has two of each of these openings on the second and third levels. The north facade has one, and the west elevation has two on the ground level.
From the NRHP Nomination Form