Davenport Hotel, Hall of the Doges, Spokane, 1911

Before Lewellyn Davenport opened his landmark Davenport Hotel in 1914, he was already celebrated for his elegant namesake restaurant. With a Mission Revival makeover by Spokane’s famous architect and aesthete Kirtland Cutter, Davenport’s Restaurant expanded in 1904 to include this extravagant second-floor ballroom modeled after the ducal palaces of Venice. Here in 1911, Spokane’s artistic community decorated this Hall of the Doges with its own elegance for an artist’s costume ball.

During the Davenport Hotel’s recent rescue and restoration, to quote the hotel’s own good-humored history, “The Hall of the Doges, Spokane’s oldest and finest ballroom, was removed from the oldest part of the structure and reinstalled in the new east addition. The removal was accomplished by lifting the ballroom out intact—making it the only flying ballroom in the world.” In the repeat photograph, today’s celebrants were attending Spokane Coeur d’Alene Opera’s Diamonds and Divas ball on New Year’s Eve 2005. —JS

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