Jesse Tinsley

Preparation for Expo ’74 led to clearing many aging commercial buildings from the Spokane River corridor. But some buildings from Spokane’s early businesses survived after the fair.

Although it took hundreds of architects, engineers, designers and builders to create Expo ’74, the artistic vision of artist Harold Balazs was everywhere at the world’s fair.

The stately five-story building, with a soaring roofline, on the northeast corner of Riverside Avenue and Washington Street has had several different names through the 20th century.

Stretching from the Model T to the Model A era, the Universal Auto Company was a Ford car dealership that began operation on Havermale Island. The name was likely borrowed from Ford’s nickname for the Model T as the “universal car,” referencing the car as a platform that could serve as a passenger car or adapted as a truck or cargo van. Fifteen million Model Ts were sold between 1908 and 1926.

It took several actions of the federal government to get the U.S. Pavilion built at Expo ’74 in Spokane.

Several bridges over the Spokane River for horse and auto traffic were once aligned with Washington Street stretching across the north and south river channels.

In 1941, there were 95 mail routes in Spokane and five still used horse-drawn mail carts traveling the city’s streets, including two in the downtown area.

The YMCA has served Spokane for more than 140 years, and its headquarters was in Riverfront Park from the 1960s to the early 2000s.