The Davenport Hotel is, if not the oldest hotel in Spokane, certainly one of the oldest.  At one time it was a grand hotel!  I don’t know why it had deteriorated to the point it had when I was called out to work on it.  For a period of time the shop I was working for was taking care of the electrical, trying to keep it going.

There was a basement to the hotel, and also a sub-basement.  In the sub-basement there was an old air conditioner with water running through a grid.  It was defunct when I began working there.

The electrical tap, off of the city sub-electrical system, was still operating.  It came into the sub-basement from under the street.  The sub-basement was very damp, with water standing on the floor.  I was afraid to leave my tools there overnight, as I was concerned the whole thing might blow up at any time.  I have no idea how they finally corrected the dampness situation.

The basement extended out under the city sidewalk surrounding it.  An old antique elevator went up through the sidewalk to facilitate receiving or removing materials. In the basement there were layers and layers of pipe attached to the ceiling.  The uppermost, top layer was the electrical conduits.  The electrical conduit was connected to open junction boxes with wire sticking out.  It was not possible to fix the open boxes with code worthy wiring methods because the layers of plumbing (sewer, water, gas, steam, air, etc.) kept the boxes out of reach.  The heating system for the hotel was steam.  Valves were located throughout the hotel to regulate the heating.

On the first floor there was a laundry and a sewing room that were no longer in use.  In fact, no one knew the sewing room was there until a wall was removed during renovation.

The most incredible thing about the hotel was the kitchen.  It was decided to remove all the old cooking equipment and install new equipment.  The existing units were made of cast iron and had never been moved from the time the kitchen was first installed.  When the cast iron equipment was removed they workers found a buildup of hardened grease up to 18 inches deep.

Working on all the equipment was an education in itself.  When the electrical inspector came down to inspect my work, I pointed out to him that there were wires lying across a steam pipe.  I told him I hadn’t done that.  Then I pointed out open junction boxes.  I said I couldn’t reach them to fix them.  He commented that it was pretty bad but made no further comments.

Later on I learned that in the Davenport’s “Hey Days”, the inspector I conferred with had been the building electrician.

Over the years since the Davenport Hotel was first built, many codes – both electrical and building standards – have changed.

Recently the Davenport has been restored and remodeled to a five star hotel.

One day a local bank called my current employer to have us come down and check out why some of their circuits were not working.  On the lowest floor there were the main electrical panel and several other electrical panels.  Scattered about the building in various locations were more electrical panels.

I checked all of the panels I could find, and couldn’t find anything wrong.  I checked frequently with the people working there and no one knew of any other electrical panels.  So I went searching.  I went through all of the floors of the building to see if there were other panels that no one seemed to know about.

One door opened into a large utility room.  It contained air conditioners, furnaces and fans.  Aha!  There was also another door leading off somewhere.  When I opened the door I learned that it was a door to the outside with a flight of stairs leading to the street.

I also learned it was connected to a warning siren.

I immediately closed the door, hurried through the room into the main area of that floor to an elevator.

All the elevators had immediately gone to the top floor and locked there.  I took the stairway down to the bottom level, quickly, and resumed my search down there.  I pretended that I had been there all the time.  After awhile the sirens quit and the elevators started working.

I went back up to the third floor.  It seemed to be the area where the power was mostly out.  I asked each employee if they had seen any sort of electrical panel anywhere.  Person after person just gave me blank looks.

Finally in one office the guy behind the desk pointed at a wall and said there was something behind the picture, but he didn’t know what it was.  I moved the picture and there beneath it was a small 12 circuit electrical panel!

Sure enough, two breakers were tripped.  I reset them and everything worked.  I located the custodian and told him what I had found and where.  He was as surprised as the man at the desk in the room where I had found the panel.  I suggested that he make an “as built” diagram locating all the electrical equipment and controls.

I never heard a word about any complaints from the bank, or of any “as built” being made.

I know I got paid for my time.

Today the bank is gone and the building still stands.

I worked on a lot of projects at Riverfront Park in Spokane.  There are a lot of stories to be told about the experiences I had there.

One time I had to dig ditches all across the park in order to put in lighting for the park.  I rented a ditcher to do the job.  It was of the type that looks like a long chain-saw arm that goes down into the ground and digs about 2 feet deep, bringing the dirt up to pile alongside the ditch on one side.

As I was working my way through the park I encountered some old street car tracks; about 18 inches below the surface.  Had I “encountered” them straight on, at a 90 degree angle, I would have ruined the ditcher.  In fact the fact that I didn’t ruin the ditcher can be attributed to the fact that I “encountered” the tracks at a lesser degree angle.  The ditching spikes would slide along the rail and skip across.

For that part of my ditch I had to get out the shovel and hand-dig the ditch under the street-car tracks.

For awhile I was driving an old telephone repair truck.  The truck had very little room to carry heavy equipment.  Of course I was using pipe cutters, pipe threaders, etc.  When I got to the job I had to unload and set up all the equipment.  Every night when I left the job, I had to load (pile) the equipment on top of the back of the truck.  It made the vehicle somewhat top heavy.

There were times that I stretched every minute out of a work day and, with re-loading the truck, wound up getting back to the shop late.  I also wound up stretching the speed limits (a little) and the safe turning speed at corners (a little).  When I turned corners the truck would tip enough so that the tires rubbed under the fenders.

The guys in the office told me that they could always tell when I was coming in – by the smoke signals coming from my tires.

I wonder why I was always given the least desirable truck in the yard.  However, the experience did have an impact on the vehicles I supplied for my employees when I ran my own business.  I made it a practice to supply properly running, maintained, and fit vehicles.  A man with a good truck that is easy to work out of will stay on the job longer.

I guess you could say that some men drive a truck for years and never have a wreck; while others drive a wreck for years and never have a truck.