Then and Now: St. John the Evangelist Cathedral

The Right Rev. Edward Makin Cross came to Spokane from St. Paul, Minnesota, in February 1924 to become the third bishop of the Episcopal Church’s Spokane diocese. The Episcopal Church, inspired by the Anglican church of England, was founded after the American Revolution and is the nation’s 14th largest Christian denomination.

Once in Spokane, Cross proposed a new cathedral that would symbolize the church to the whole region.

There were three Episcopal churches in Spokane at that time: St. James Church at 25th Avenue and Grand Boulevard; St. Peter’s Episcopal Church at Newark Avenue and Denver Street in what is now the Perry District; and All Saints Cathedral at Jefferson Street and First Avenue, downtown. Once the new cathedral was built, the churches combined to fill the new building.

A speaker at a fundraising dinner in 1926 stated that “the new cathedral will be a glorious advertisement of the city of Spokane throughout the country,” and that the church “will be an outward expression of the strength of our faith.”

The diocese commissioned architect Harold C. Whitehouse, a church member, to design a Gothic cathedral in the English tradition. Builder Fred Phair laid the stone, which came from Washington, Idaho and Indiana. A yearslong fundraising effort paid for the main church to be built at 12th Avenue and Grand Boulevard between 1925 and 1929. Cost of the initial structure was estimated at $500,000.

There was no transept, tower or chancel yet, and those would have to wait until after the Great Depression and World War II. Further construction, estimated to cost $1 million, continued in 1948 and was finished in 1954, shortly after Cross finished his service as bishop in 1950. A new bishop, the Right Rev. Russell S. Hubbard, presided over the dedication of the expanded cathedral.

The tower was dedicated in the name of the former bishop, who was called the “founder” of the cathedral. The tower and transept of the church were made possible by a gift from Mr. and Mrs. George Frederick Jewett, their son George F. Jewett Jr. and their daughter Margaret Weyerhaeuser Jewett. The Jewett family was associated with Potlatch Forests Inc. and timber interests around the region. George Jewett Sr. died in 1956, and his funeral was at the cathedral.

The cathedral tower, made from limestone quarried in Tacoma, stands just over 167 feet high.