Bridge, What Bridge?

The information about the bridge on the front of this post card was taken from this website: https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/507 The river that lent its name to Spokane has also been a barrier to the development of the city. No sooner was Spokane established than city fathers looked for places to bridge the raging currents. Today’s Monroe Street Bridge, a Spokane landmark, is the third bridge on this site.

The first Monroe Street Bridge was constructed of wood and built with horses and wagons in mind. The city, the Cable Railway Company, and property owners along Monroe Street split the cost of $42,500.00 to build the bridge. A new Monroe Street Bridge constructed of steel was completed in 1890. The steel bridge represented a step towards modernity, and was completed just in time to accommodate an unprecedented time of expansion for the city. The bridge boasted updates such as overhead lighting and the ability to accommodate doubled-tracked streetcars. But the new bridge soon became a source of controversy. It was immediately apparent that the bridge vibrated heavily, perhaps dangerously, with any sort of traffic. In 1905 the bridge was deemed unsafe by National Good Roads Association, and the next year a bridge expert labeled the bridge an accident waiting to happen: “Should a street car run off the track, or a bunch of steers be driven over it, the whole thing might collapse.” In 1907 the elephants of the Ringling Brother’s Circus refused to walk across the shaky span. Three years later the south side of the bridge collapsed after a mudslide. Spokane had plenty of trouble with its bridges in those days. In 1915, the Division Street Bridge collapsed, dropping a street car into the river resulting in 5 deaths and twelve injuries. These tragedies fueled an intense demand for safer concrete-arch bridges. A grand new Monroe Street Bridge was designed by Spokane City Engineer John Chester Ralston, and Spokane’s most celebrated architects: Kirtland K. Cutter and Karl G. Malmgren. Construction over the 140-feet deep and 1,500 feet wide gorge was challenged by severe windstorms, high water levels, and swift-moving currents. Two laborers died and over fifty were injured. Ralston was removed from the project after he was accused of stealing the design from Rocky River Bridge in Cleveland, and replaced by his assistant. Today’s Monroe Street Bridge opened November 23, 1911 with over 3,000 Spokane citizens on hand to celebrate. It was the world’s largest concrete arch-bridge. In 1914, just a few years after completion of this visual landmark, the city fathers permitted a railroad bridge to be built right over the top of it, marring the beauty of the structure. The Great Northern Railroad bridge remained in place for over half a century, until it was removed as part of the preparations for Expo 74. Today the Monroe Street Bridge today looks very much as it did in 1911, thanks to the removal of the railroad bridge and a 2003-2005 reconstruction project. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, all but the central span of the bridge was demolished and completely reconstructed starting in 2003. Reconstruction was necessary because by the 1990s the bridge had begun to drop large chucks of concrete into the river below. The rebuilding preserved the structural features from the original 1911 design, including Cutter and Malmgren’s life-size buffalo skulls, wagon wheels, wagon pavilions, and chain handrails that embody the pioneer spirit of Spokane’s earliest settlers. The bridge reopened in September 2005.

The post card was printed by Metropolitan MetroCraft (1939 – 1984) a major printer of linen and photochrome postcards displaying a variety of subjects. They also printed postcards for many other publishers. A good number of Metrocraft’s early photochrome postcards retained the use of retouchers that had worked on their linens. These cards have a very distinct look before they went over to a completely uniform photographic means of natural color reproduction. The information about the publisher of this post card was taken from this website: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/aug/08/then-and-now-john-w-graham-and-co/ John W. Graham, born 1860 in Rockport, Indiana, knew how to sell. He delivered newspapers, sold apples on the street with his brother James and helped his dad trade farm animals up and down the Ohio River. At the age of 10, he set up a little table in a general store where he sold tablets, ink and writing paper. While working in a Minneapolis stationery store in 1887, he read about a promising Western boomtown in the Washington territory. He stepped off the train in Spokane in 1888. The rustic town didn’t appeal to him, so he decided to hop back on the evening train and go to Seattle. But he had dropped two shirts at a Chinese laundry and he had to stay until the next day to get them back. The delay changed his mind and he took a job in the stationery shop of Sylvester Heath. Within a year, Heath’s shop was burned to the ground in Spokane’s great fire in August of 1889. Heath decided not to rebuild, so Graham set up a tent on the ashes of Heath’s store and went into business. For the next 80 years, John W. Graham and Co. was Spokane’s place to buy books, magazines, stationery, art and office supplies, cameras and film, paint, wallpaper, furniture and gifts. Graham’s slogan was “If it’s made of paper, we have it.” Graham’s store was first located in the Great Eastern Building until it was destroyed by fire in 1898. The next location, on the 700 block of West Sprague Avenue, extending to First Avenue on the building’s upper floors, was the store’s most enduring location. Historian Carolyn Hage Nunemaker, in her book of Spokane photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, said Graham’s was five stories of open showrooms and interesting nooks and crannies. “A stranger wandering in might have gotten lost in the peculiar arrangement, but those of us who knew its secrets felt comfortably familiar there,” she wrote. For many years, Graham’s even had the largest toy department in Spokane. John Graham died of a heart attack in June 1941 at the age of 81. A group of his employees bought the business from his estate in 1951. The business stayed in the old building until 1973, when the structure was torn down to make way for the Washington Trust Bank building. The store moved to a smaller location at Riverside Avenue and Stevens Street for a few years, and was bought out by Portland-based bookseller J.K. Gill Co. around 1980.