History & Background

The Chamberlin Company and Ballard Plannery

The Chamberlin Real Estate and Improvement Company was founded by Gilbert Lewis Chamberlin in 1899. Born in Illinois in 1853, Chamberlin began his career as a farmer and later became a banker in Kansas. He came to Spokane in 1899, following neighborhood developments he completed in Los Angeles, Denver, and Salt Lake City. As president and founder of the Chamberlin Company, and president and manager of the Reserve Realty Company, Gilbert Chamberlin offered houses for sale on contract, allowing emerging working and middle-class buyers to purchase an affordable home through installment plans. The Chamberlin Company offered homes and apartment houses in a variety of architectural styles, such as American Foursquare, Craftsman Bungalow, and Dutch Colonial. Chamberlin also produced promotional catalogues and pattern books to advertise the area and their homes.

The Ballard Plannery Company worked in conjunction with the Chamberlin Company, which is not surprising considering that Ballard Plannery’s founder, William J. Ballard, married Gilbert Chamberlin’s daughter Ina in 1905. William Ballard worked for Chamberlin early in his career, opening the Ballard Plannery Company in 1908. Ballard was a trained architect and published plan books and designed residential and commercial buildings throughout Spokane.

The presence of development and real estate companies, such as the Chamberlin Company and Ballard Plannery, that sold designs from self-published pattern books and would alternatively sell designs, finance, and/or build your home, links both Nettleton’s 1^st and 2^nd Addition with national trends in home building at the time. These mechanisms developed to provide housing during a period of explosive growth in cities throughout the United States, due to in-migration from rural areas and immigration from foreign countries. It also links Spokane to other developing areas on the west coast, where the bungalow design, a common house form found in both additions, was particularly suited to a more relaxed lifestyle, and the northwest where a shortage of trained architects made pattern books an attractive option.  

To learn more about the pattern book houses of West Central and Nettleton's Addition, click here.

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