Around Swedish America in 548 Days - Day 527

Day 527 - Spokane

Albin Pehrson was honored as one of Spokane’s most successful citizens at a banquet in 1941. He was also considered to be one of the foremost architects in Spokane. Pehrson (1887-1968) devoted more than half a century to creating hundreds of buildings in Spokane, including Paulsen Center, Cronicle Building and the 14-story South East Wing addition to the Davenport Hotel. In 1943 he got the assignment - from Washington DC - to do the complete town-planning and all the building designs required to create the new town of Richland, WA, the new site of the World War II plutonium production plant. Pehrson’s staff now grew to over 350 architects, drafts men and engineers (wrote Göran Rygert in Swedish Press in an article about Swedish Architects in North America).

In 1888 the Reverend Peter Carlson organized the Salem Lutheran congregation, 1428 W Broadway (509-328-6280). The following year, the church constructed a brick-veneer building at Broadway and Walnut. In 1949 during work on an adjoining building and gymnasium, a spark from a cutting torch ignited a disastrous fire, but many of the stained-glass windows, most of the pipe organ, and the Olof Grafström 1924 painting of the Good Shepherd were saved. The windows were incorporated into the new sanctuary. Other notable churches in town include the former Swedish Baptist Church, 212 S. Division Street (509-747-2818), whose new building houses in its narthex the cornerstone of the former Covenant Tabernacle (Svenska Tabernaklet).