Historic Properties of Spokane
Marr House
The Charles Edward Marr House is an excellent and well-preserved example of a Craftsman-style bungalow. The house features full-width front porch, decorative brackets, elaborate exposed rafter tails and twin gabled dormers clad with Tuodoresque false half-timbering. Frank G. Hutchinson, an accomplished architect and delineator employed by prominent Spokane firms including Albert Held, Cutter and Malmgren, Hyslop and Westcott, and Jacques and Rantoul, designed the home. Spokane building contractors George and William Sillman built it during 1912 and 1913. They sold the home to Charles Marr in 1914. Marr, a keen businessman, became Spokane’s first grocery store magnate and helped establish the first “self service” Piggly Wiggly Stores and, later, the first Safeway supermarkets in the Spokane area. Beginning in 1909 with one market, Marr’s burgeoning grocery empire grew to include 575 stores in four major cities and two states by 1929.