Comstock is a neighborhood in Spokane, Washington. It is located on the south side of the city in a broader area commonly known as the South Hill. The neighborhood is primarily single-family residential, and a mix of homes built during the streetcar era and then built during the post-World War II housing boom. The neighborhood is also home to a few commercial districts, including the regionally important Manito Shopping Center, two schools, the eponymous Comstock Park, sports fields and a golf course.
History
The Spokane people inhabited what is now Comstock for centuries prior to the arrival of European settlers in the second half of the 19th century.
In 1888, the Cook's Line of the Montrose Electric Company streetcar system reached to 37th Avenue and Grand Boulevard. Another line traveled along Division Street a few blocks west of Grand and ended at 33rd Avenue. With the streetcar came early settlers into Comstock. Land was platted and homes were built in the areas closest to the streetcar lines, with areas beyond remaining largely undeveloped into the middle of the 20th century. Manito Boulevard was constructed in 1907 as a tree-lined parkway from Manito Park in the north to 35th Avenue in the south, with the hopes of bringing development further into the Comstock neighborhood.
In 1913, as part of the Olmsted Brothers' plan for the city, it was decided to extend Manito Boulevard south to the bluff on the edge of the neighborhood. There, Manito Boulevard would connect with a new parkway, High Drive, which would run west and north along the edge of the bluff through Comstock and beyond. Though the plan did not come to fruition until 1947. It was at that time, during the post-war housing boom, that the southern areas of Comstock, beyond the reach of the now-defunct streetcar lines, began to see full development.
Between the initial arrival of streetcars in the late 19th century and the development of the southern portion of the neighborhood in the mid-20th century, much of the undeveloped land in the southern half of Comstock was developed into parkland. A golf course was built at the original southern terminus of Manito Boulevard in 1907 as part of a plan to lure home builders to the area. By 1922, however, the golf course had moved, though only about a mile to the south where it exists to this day as Manito Golf and Country Club, on the far southern tip of Comstock. The original land used by the golf course was acquired in 1925 by Principal Hart of Lewis and Clark High School, which was located downtown but served the neighborhood. Lewis and Clark's location in the dense city center did not allow it to have sports fields on campus, so the former golf course was converted into Hart Field and to this day is the site of the school's playfields. In 1960, the southern part of Hart Field was developed into Sacajawea Middle School. Comstock Park, with a then state-of-the-art pool, was established in 1938.
Comstock Park was named for James M. Comstock, an early pioneer and businessman who founded The Crescent department store downtown, and later served a term as mayor of Spokane. The land for the park was purchased by Comstock's daughter, Josie Shadle, and donated to the city in 1936. The neighborhood surrounding the park subsequently took Comstock's name as well.
After World War II, the vacant areas on the edges of the neighborhood began to fill in. The land to the west of Comstock Park had been developed by 1958, and the curving streets to the south of the park were filled in in the final decades of the 20th century.
In the late 1950s, the Walther Family, who had owned and operated Manito Grocers out of a two story building at 30th and Grand since 1911, together with developers drafted plans for an expanded shopping center surrounding the busy intersection of 29th and Grand. However, the neighborhood came together to fight the development proposal and it would spend much of the next decade going through court proceedings. Ultimately, the Walthers and their developers won out and the Manito Shopping Center was built in 1969. Construction of the Manito Shopping Center meant the destruction of the former Spokane College building located on the site. Built in 1906, the building housed a college until 1942, and after World War II used as apartment housing.