Built in 1903, the Inland Empire News Building is number four on the list of resources within the Hillyard Historic Business District and is one of the nineteen contributing resources. Now the home of Market Street Antiques, one of no less than four antique emporiums along Market Street in the district, the building has survived relatively unmodified. That we know of, the building has been home to two furniture stores, a local newspaper and a printing business, not to mention the present antiques store. We wish we could say what the store has to offer, but were a little short on time and didn't go in to browse.
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.
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.