Manito / Cannon Hill Neighborhood

Manito / Cannon Hill Neighborhood

Manito / Cannon Hill Neighborhood

Manito/Cannon Hill - Days of Yore

Catalysts for residential development in Manito/Cannon Hill included the streetcars (1888-1936), parks, boulevards, and Wilson Elementary.

In the 1880s, a clay deposit was discovered on the land that is now Cannon Hill Park. The clay was used for making bricks and the site became a brickyard. Once all of the clay was harvested, the brickyard was moved, making way for Cannon Hill Park amenities in later years.

To the east, Francis Cook purchased 160 acres which includes all of the present Manito Park. He called the area Montrose Park. His plan was to develop home sites in the area. In 1888, Cook built a streetcar line that ran along Grand Boulevard and ended at a car house near 37th to provide transportation to future residents. But, Cook lost everything during the 1893 depression. Jay P. Graves, who made a fortune in mining, took over Cook’s streetcar line, naming it the Spokane and Montrose Motor Company.

Other streetcar lines in the area included one that zigzagged southward west of Manito Park along Bernard and then Browne before ending at 33rd and Division; and the Washington Waterpower Company’s (WWP) North MonroeCannon Hill line that meandered southward along Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln (west of Cannon Hill Park) and Howard before ending at 29th.

In addition, Graves and a group of partners formed the Spokane-Washington Improvement Company to develop and sell properties in their new Manito Addition (between 14th and 33rd Avenues north-south, and Division and Hatch Streets east-west).

Realizing the value that a park and other city services would add to the adjacent residential parcels, Graves’ company, along with other investors including WWP, made a deal with the city to donate approximately 95 acres of land for Manito Park in exchange for roads and utilities.

Manito Park was dedicated in 1904 and originally hosted a zoo. Manito Park, Manito Boulevard, and subdivision development cumulatively resulted in a real estate boom in the area, as reinforced in a front page article in the Spokesman-Review on August 4, 1907 stating, “park improvements add fifteen times their cost to adjacent property… property adjacent… is 100 per cent more valuable than it would have been in the same district without the park or boulevard improvements having been made.

”Since that time many updates have been made to Manito Park, including the rose garden, a Japanese Garden, the sunken gardens, the greenhouses, playgrounds, shelters, and other improvements. Manito Park and Manito Boulevard have since been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Olmsted brothers developed their design for Cannon Hill Park when they arrived in Spokane in 1907. The plans included a recommendation to replace the old brickyard with a park dedicated to “quiet recreation.” The design included a stone shelter, two pergolas, and a children’s wading pool. The wading pool was easy to construct as a depression left in the ground by the brickyard left a natural pool, shallow enough to play in to cool off in the summer

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