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If you want to know a little bit about the history of the Spokane County Courthouse,
just ask Ron Oscarson, the county's facilities director.
Oscarson became
a passionate student of county courthouse history ever since recent high winds
damaged the flagpole on top of the tallest spire on the 111-year-old building.
"After
the storm, we came to work to find the pole leaning about 8 degrees off center,"
Oscarson said. "It probably would have held, but we could just see it toppling
off the top of the building if another wind came along."
 So,
Oscarson called in a really tall crane to lift the pole out of the top of the
building where it has been imbedded since shortly after the building was completed
in 1895.
To most onlookers, casually eyeing the spire and its flagpole
from the ground, the pole didn't look very long. But when workmen disconnected
it from its mountings in the spire, they found that 10 feet of it was inside the
building while 50 feet stretched up into the sky. Oscarson said the pole, made
out of six 10-foot steel sections, weighed about 2,000 pounds.
Ron
Oscarson shows the ball, which has adorned the top of the courthouse flagpole
for the past 111 years. He said the ball has a bullet hole in it, and there are
three papers inside that look like business cards. Removing the
pole, however, raised some historical questions among the courthouse's maintenance
and facilities crews. Oscarson said that when he checked the original drawings
of the building which are still on file in the facilities department office he
couldn't find where a flagpole was planned for the top of the building. The top
of the spire had a pole with filigree around its base. He said maintenance crews
had found pieces of tin that looked like filigree in the tower, so he assumed
the pole had been added later.
Further study, however, found a photo
taken shortly after the building was completed, showing a flagpole on top of the
tower. Oscarson said it looked like a shorter pole, which may have been replaced
when the building was remodeled in the 1920s.
Another mystery surfaced
after the pole was removed. Oscarson said that when he examined the gold ball
located on top of the pole, he found that some sharp shooter had scored a direct
hit on it, creating entry and exit holes. Since the ball is hollow, the holes
provided a peek inside it. Using a fiber optic flashlight, he peered inside and
found three pieces of paper, obviously placed there before the ball was sealed.
"The look like business cards," Oscarson said.
He
said the one card on which he was able to read some of the print, indicated it
was from a metal shop that used to be located on the corner of Monroe and Riverside
at the end of the 19th Century. He said that he plans to disconnect the ball from
its mounting pole in order to retrieve the papers inside it.
Oscarson's
attempts to solve the mysteries of the flagpole have led him to raise historical
questions about the courthouse itself. He said that the original plans show that
the entries of the building were at what is now the second floor level of the
building. The current main floor was the basement of the building. He also found
that the original building was built with a courtyard in its center.
"This
was a place for the prisoners in the jail to go out for exercise and a little
fresh air," Oscarson said.
It also was the place where it has
long been rumored that a prisoner was hanged by the county.
At first,
he couldn't find what had been the external wall to that courtyard. It was covered
up when the building was remodeled and expanded in the early 1940s. When the assessor
vacated his rooms on the main floor this past year, workmen began tearing away
a wall to discover the original brick wall and windows that used to open onto
that courtyard. What was even more interesting is that one of the windows is still
there and still adorned with iron bars.
Workmen also found a poster
inside the wall, placed there obviously in 1940. It was a campaign poster for
Frank Koontz, a Republican who was running for District 2 commissioner. A check
of newspaper files showed he lost in a race against C.M. Lockwood in the primary.
Other
mysteries prevail in the courthouse, including the stairway to nowhere inside
a closet on the third floor and the rooms in the basement that look like cells
from the original jail.
Oscarson says he is intent on learning as much
about the history of the courthouse as he can. He said there is one practical
aspect to his research. That is to find the differences between the original plans
and what actually was built into the courthouse and what has been changed over
the years. That's important, he said, because when remodeling is being accomplished
as it is now workmen can avoid surprises and make an effort to preserve important
historical features of this unique building. Click
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By
CHARLIE PLUMB
