Ah, the turntables they’ve spun on! Our Lost Album Giveaway features discs found in the house from artists like The Platters. Roy Clark. Dolly Parton, Tom Jones. Buck Owens. Chet Atkins. Andy Williams, Peggy Lee, Eric Clapton, and many more.Click here for details about the contest.

LOST ALBUM GIVEAWAY SERIES

Robin Dyer is the second winner of our Lost Album Giveaway contest. Dyer is a local artist, currently specializing in healing arts at her studio in Spokane, WA. After receiving degree in fine arts from Gonzaga University, she decided to pursue teaching her own content while continuing to work in the art community.

See the separate After joining our mailing list, Robin was amazed that she had won the drawing our Lost Album Giveaway. She soon arrived at the Eikenbary-Pierce House (EPH) to peruse the album library and select her favorite – “The Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby” (1987).

“I live and teach in Spokane, WA and spend time in Thompson Falls, MT taking care of my folks. I grew up in Thompson Falls, and I would love to create a workshop for those interested in this area as well! Come visit me, take a class at my studio in Spokane Valley!” – Robin Dyer, Smart Heart Art

We are thankful for Robin Dyer’s visit to EPH and we extended an invitation for her advice and influence on our projects at the Eikenbary-Pierce House.

RESTORATION UPDATE: We recently embarked on a special project at a nearby home on the Spokane Historic Register –  restoring a vintage Hall’s Safe & Lock Co. safe from the late 1800’s. To follow that project, see the articles in our news section.

One thing we’ve learned from going through this house is that “you can’t take it with you.” So we launched a contest we’re calling the “Lost Album Giveaway.” From now until the albums are gone, we’ll giving away one album for every 10 signups to our email list. To collect your album, you can either come to the historic house on Spokane’s South Hill, pick up your prize, and get a free renovation tour, or we’ll mail the album to you.

Little Free Library Charms Visitors to the Eikenbary-Pierce House

Some visitors bring books, others borrow a book. Some stay to chat and learn more about the Craftsman home restoration, enjoy refreshments, or sign the guest book.

Meet Mike Tripp, Master Safe Mechanic

“There’s something about the daunting look of an antique safe that just inspires the inner outlaw in everybody. While hardly anyone’s going around and cracking open bank safes anymore using stethoscopes and daring countenance, these once highly useful repositories have become beloved collectors items today.” -from the Love to Know blog

The vintage Hall’s Safe we’ve been rehabbing at a nearby historic home in the South Hill neighborhood of Spokane benefited from a checkup and day surgery by master safe mechanic Mike Tripp.

After scrubbing in, Tripp pointed to the signature emblazoned on the safe door, noting that his patient had been worked on by renowned safe mechanic C. L. Corey of Spokane, who was active in Spokane in the 1930s.

Tripp noted that C.L. Corey wrote a book about the safe business  in early Spokane, actually a diary that was later published into book form.

“When I get back to my shop library, I’ll look in my copy of Corey’s book to see if there is a reference to your safe,” Tripp said. Stay tuned!

While the EPH restoration crew observed and documented the operation, Tripp extracted the rotating plates that are responsible for unlocking and locking the safe (photos).

Mike Tripp identified the previous drill holes, one of them most likely by Corey in 1932, according to the notes on the internal panel.

This has been a fun project, and we are thankful to learn its history and to know that this classic safe is getting the attention it needs.

Little Free Library Charms Visitors to the Eikenbary-Pierce House

Media Production Studio, Powder Room Come to Life

Finding effective ways to tell the story of the structure and communicate with the community is an important mission at the historic Eikenbary-Pierce House in the Cliff-Canon neighborhood on Spokane’s South Hill.

Photos, from top: Studio powder room renovation; crown molding; finishing studio stair railings; powder room insulation.

In the latest stage of the restoration, “we have been converting the darkroom that Dr Eikenbary used for his photography to a ‘powder room’ next to what will be a media production studio,” said project manager Henry A. Pierce III.

“Growing up, my sister and I called the room we’re creating the studio in, the “playroom.” It was where we played and did our homework on two antique school desks with inkwells.”

In transforming the powder room, crew preserved as much of the character of Dr. Eikenbary’s original darkroom as possible, while making the space modern and functional.

First, project engineers removed the 100-year-old plaster and installed new insulation along with plumbing and electrical improvements. Then they applied drywall and surfaced the walls. After carefully dislodging and reconditioning the original moldings, they reset the trim in its original position.

Concurrent with the darkroom makeover, the crew is renovating the former playroom into a state-of-the-art studio for video and audio podcast production. The playroom-turned-studio has been fitted with high-speed internet and local-area-network cables to facilitate media production and communication.

The crew sanded the original maple floors in the studio space with a dual-axial mechanical sander and applied two-part urethane to preserve the original patina.

In the studio, Henry aims to record and edit the story of EPH and produce other local historical documentaries. He plans to collaborate with and provide studio time to members of the community to tell their stories.

“Painstaking and detailed as it is, the restoration process captivates me. I’d rather spend resources and time on this project than pursue personal creature comforts,” said Henry (photos). “I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment as the Eikenbary-Pierce House comes back to life. It will be fun to create programs in the studio that tell the history of the house and give a voice to the people of the community.”

Little Free Library:
A Source of Joy at the EPH

Some visitors bring books, others borrow a book. Some stay to chat and learn more about the Craftsman home restoration, enjoy refreshments, or sign the guest book.

Redemption of the 1906 Franklin Model G

In life, we sometimes become responsible for things of value by default. They end up in our lap, and we really have to search our souls for the right thing to do. One such challenge for the Eikenbary-Pierce House (EPH) stewards was what to do with the estate’s 1906 Model G Franklin. A zippy “sports car” in its heyday, this early automobile was quite the basket case after a long repose en plein air.

The life-story of this 115-year-old automobile is a fascinating one. We don’t know much about its younger days, but the plot thickens during World War II, when Spokane antiques collector Leroy Price was pressured to dispose of his extensive collection of cars during the scrap-metal drive to support the war effort. Price turned to his friend Henry Pierce Jr., the son of Eikenbary-Pierce House owner Henry Pierce. In the nick of time, he transferred possession of the 1906 Franklin, then in a relatively assembled condition. At that time, the Franklin was a mere 38 years old!

Over the next 70 years, the Franklin’s mechanical parts lay in state of disassembly at the Eikenbary-Pierce House in Spokane. The wooden frame to the car rested for decades in the ancient orchard at the family’s California Creek farm south of the city. To protect it from further attrition by the elements, EPH stewards moved the Franklin’s vulnerable frame in the early 2000s to a secure indoor location in Idaho.

After the death of their father Henry Pierce Jr in 2009, Charlotte and Henry Pierce III came to realize that the most appropriate owner of the Franklin would by a serious restorer who could make it purr again.

An ad in Hemming’s Motor News and other appropriate collectors’ publications attracted a steady stream of vintage car buffs, including Spokane distiller Don Poffenroth. Finallly, Massachusetts inventor and engineering professor Robert Daniello said he would relish the challenge of bringing the car back to life and took delivery of the parts.

The photos accompanying this post and in the related album tell the story of how antique-car expert and family friend Ed Joy and Henry consolidated the widely scattered parts carried out a detective-level reassembly of the frame and mechanical parts in the living room of EPH.  Ed inspected the roughly gathered 1906 Model G, and provided a reviews and testimonials to prospective buyers (photos).

Robert Daniello maintains a blog where he periodically posts updates of the Model G restoration milestones.

1906 Franklin Model G Restoration Blog

A rusty, bullet-ridden bathtub. Tin children’s toys bearing faint traces of colorful paint. Abandoned eyeglasses relegated to decades of repose in the privy pit. 100-year-old  Mason jars filled with indeterminate content.

Tower Mountain yields its secrets

History is coming alive at the historic Moonshine Shack restoration on Tower Mountain near Spokane, Washington.

When project director Mick Deviny was a young boy, the old-timers who lived on Tower Mountain since the moonshine era pointed out historical artifacts and structures on his property and talked of the moonshiner and his family who produced illicit alcohol at the site during Prohibition in the 1920s. Mick plans to open a small museum at the site.

Following the footprint

As the restoration project began in 2018, parts of the 1920s-era distillery building remained standing and the engineers have incorporated them into the restoration whenever possible. At a small local boutique sawmill, the project engineers milled boards for the shack from trees that they salvaged from a recent real estate transaction in the Spokane Valley. 

“Milling our own boards allowed us to build to a historically accurate size and substantially reduced the cost of the construction,” noted project engineer Henry Pierce, “and it gave us a greater emotional connection to the project.”

“We built the replicated Moonshine Shack on the original footprint of a cabin where the moonshiner lived with his wife,” said Mick, “and we even found some children’s artifacts, along with the distillery building footprint.”

Lost spectacles

Project director Mick has located the site where the moonshiners set up their still, as well as the location of a pig pen, privy, and chicken yard. During the construction, engineers found the moonshiners’ original tin bathtub, since marred by bullet holes. Mick is confident there are more artifacts to be found at the site. 

“It’s likely that target practice by local trespassers in the years after the moonshine activity produced the bullet holes,” said Mick, “but it makes for an interesting visual in the context of the story.” 

Please use our contact form to book a tour of the 
Moonshine Shack or the Eikenbary-Pierce House.

Restoration engineers found this bed headboard used by the moonshiners.