Rockwood, Spokane

Rockwood
Spokane Neighborhood
St. John's Cathedral in Rockwood
Coordinates: 47°37′56.9″N 117°23′40.1″W / 47.632472°N 117.394472°W / 47.632472; -117.394472Coordinates: 47°37′56.9″N 117°23′40.1″W / 47.632472°N 117.394472°W / 47.632472; -117.394472
Country	United States
State	Washington
County	Spokane
City	Spokane
Boroughs	list
Population  (2017[1])
• Total	4,337
Demographics 2017
• White	92.7%
• Latinx	3.7%
• Asian	1.8%
• American Indian	1.1%
• Black	0.8%
Time zone	UTC-8 (PST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-7 (PDT)
ZIP Codes	99203 and 99202
Area code(s)	509

Rockwood is a neighborhood in Spokane, Washington. It is located on the south side of the city to the southeast of Downtown Spokane and expanding southeasterly from close to the city center. Its proximity to downtown makes it one of Spokane's older neighborhoods, with mature trees lining most of its streets. Due to its location on the hill leading up from the Spokane River Valley, the street grid breaks down in many places around Rockwood. The most notable of these is along the winding Rockwood Boulevard, which bends its way from the northwesternmost corner of the neighborhood through the center and across to the eastern border.

It is one of the more affluent neighborhoods in the Spokane community. Many old, large homes are located in Rockwood, and unlike many of the other old neighborhoods surrounding the Spokane city center, the vast majority of the large homes in Rockwood continue to serve as single-family housing.

Geography[]

Grand Boulevard, a major north-south thoroughfare, is the neighborhood's western boundary and 29th street, a major east-west thoroughfare, bounds Rockwood on the south. Southeast Boulevard serves as the majority of the neighborhood's eastern and northern boundaries. Between Grand and Southeast Boulevards, about five block lengths of side streets act as the boundary between Rockwood on the south and East Central to the north.

Rockwood Boulevard at 12th Avenue in autumn

Within the neighborhood is the Rockwood Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The district is about two blocks wide between Hatch and Arthur streets from 29th Avenue on the south to 14th Avenue on the north, from which it continues turns to the northwest and continues to the northwesternmost corner of the neighborhood.^[2] This area of the neighborhood was designed by noted landscape architects, the Olmsted Brothers.^[3] It features streets that curve around exposed basalt outcroppings and through old ponderosa pine and Douglas fir forest as they wind their way up the hill from downtown. The Olmsteds were fond of diagonal streets such as Southeast Boulevard that borders the neighborhood. The Rockwood neighborhood borders two of the city's larger parks, but does not contain any true parks within its boundaries. However, in the Rockwood Historic Districts, four small grassy islands are located on Garfield Road and Rockwood Boulevard, known as the Olmsted Triangle Parks, as well as a pair of grassy boulevards that intersect at the intersection of Upper Terrace Road and Rockwood and Highland Boulevards.^[4][5] The neighborhood's terrain is reflected in many of the street names, like the aforementioned Rockwood, Highland and Upper Terrace, as well as Crest Road and Overbluff Drive.^[6]

The neighborhood is overwhelmingly residential, though commercial districts exist in the northwest along Grand Boulevard extending north from 14th Avenue and in the Southeast along 29th from Pittsburgh Street and extending east into the Lincoln Heights neighborhood. Hutton Elementary School is located in the middle of the neighborhood at 24th Avenue and Plateau Road.^[4]

History[]

Stone towers marking the entrance to the Rockwood Historic District on Highland Boulevard

In the 1880s, Rockwood was known as Montrose for the hilly terrain and patches of wild roses growing in the area. Frances Cook, one of the first European settlers in the area, owned much of the land now part of Rockwood. Cook laid a streetcar line into the neighborhood, and had plans for more development, but he was forced to sell his holdings during the Panic of 1893. Development of the neighborhood continued when mining magnate Jay P. Graves acquired much of the Cook's land and extended streetcar service through the area.^[4]

The neighborhood began to take on its current form in 1907, when the Olmsted Brothers were hired to plan and design the Rockwood area. Their plan was funded for $1 million in 1910. This area is now preserved as the Rockwood Historic District and is known for its tree-lined streets and large homes set well back from the curb.^[4]

With the neighborhood experiencing rapid growth and development in the second decade of the 20th century, there became the need for a school in Rockwood. A one-room school was built in 1917, and soon replaced by a much larger vacility. In 1920, Hutton School was built in the south-central area of the neighborhood. It was designed in a Spanish eclectic style, with stucco walls, red tile roofing, arched entryways and windows, and exposed wooden beams. The school has subsequently been expanded on three occasions, in 1949 and 1956, and then in 2015 when the 1949 and 1956 expansions were removed and replaced with a new, two-story structure for cost of $29 million. The historic 1921 building remains intact and contains the main entrance, library, offices and some classrooms. The building was listed on the Spokane Register of Historic Places in 2015.^[7]

Construction on neighborhood's most iconic structure, St. John's Cathedral, began in 1925 on a bluff in Rockwood's far northwestern corner.^[8] The 180 foot tall Gothic Revival structure is built entirely from cut stone. Its height, combined with its setting on a bluff at the crest of the steep hill leading up from Downtown, makes the cathedral a landmark visible from areas to the north, east and west.

Streetcars connected Rockwood with the rest of the city until 1935, when the service was abandoned citywide. Remnants of the streetcar era are still visible in places along the former route, which followed Rockwood Boulevard. The grassy median on the south and west side of the winding road was once the streetcar platform. The median retains the step-up appearance of the former platform.^[4]

Demographics[]

As of 2017, 4,337 people live in Rockwood across 1,855 households. Of those households, 25.8% are rented, well below the citywide average of 45.3%. 31.5% of residents are age 19 or younger while 19.1% are aged 65 or above. The median household income is $87,201, nearly double the citywide figure of $44,768. Residents with a bachelor's degree or higher account for 67.5% of Rockwood residents while those with a high school diploma or less account for 8.2%. 92.4% of residents were born in the United States or one of its territories. Among foreign-born residents, Canada accounts for the most at 25.6%, followed by the Philippines at 11%, Ukraine at 9.8% and Hungary at 7.6%.^[1]

References[]