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The house at 1204 S. Adams
Street was constructed in 1896 for the family of Thomas J.
Graham and his wife Charlotte. The house was pretentious in the
way that the nouveax riche can be. It was large and complex,
with a porch wrapped around three sides, and high canted bay
windows that looked toward Spokane to the south. It was among
the first houses to be built high on the South Hill. Exclusive
residential development had begun along the lower reaches of the
Hill and only gradually crept to the heights above. Thomas
Graham and his wife arrived in Spokane at an auspicious time.
The city and the region were recovering from the financial
crisis sometimes called the “Panic of 1893.” In the 1899 Polk
City Directory, Thomas Graham's occupation was listed simply as
“mining.” Like other newly flush recipients of the mining
bonanza, he used his money to make more money through real
estate and other investments. Between 1896 and 1898, he was in
a partnership with James A. Odell, whose company (Odell and
Graham) dealt in “Bonds, Warrants, and Other Investments.”
Their business office was located in the old Rookery Building.
In 1902, Graham was dealing in real estate on his own, from an
office in the Mohawk Building. During 1905, the last active
year of his life, he was a partner in “Livingood and Graham,”
trading real estate with J.T. Livingood. Thomas Graham died in
1906. By 1927, the Graham House had been converted into
apartments. By 2002, the house had seen no less than 185
different tenets. The Graham House is an unusually early example
of such adaptive utilization, having served as an apartment
building at least since 1927, and perhaps earlier. Its
remarkably high turn over rate has made it one of the most lived
in houses in the city and the roster of its former residents is
a virtual catalog of the evolving demographic and social makeup
of Spokane.
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