Audubon/Downriver is a neighborhood in Spokane, Washington, located on the northwest side of the city. There is a diversity of land use in the neighborhood, with single-family residential areas dating from the early 20th century through the Post–World War II economic expansion era, regionally important commercial districts, smaller neighborhood retail areas, numerous schools, large parks, a golf course, conservation areas and part of Riverside State Park along the Spokane River. The neighborhood is the site of the corporate offices for Rosauers Supermarkets, a regional grocery store chain with stores located across the Northwestern United States.
The neighborhood's name comes from two areas within its bounds, Audubon Park and the Downriver area, so named for being located downriver from Downtown Spokane.
History
The Spokane people have lived in what is now Audubon/Downriver for hundreds of years. They fished and camped along the banks of the Spokane river and gathered edible crops near a natural spring now known as Drumheller Springs. A trail passed through the neighborhood, giving its name to the North Indian Trail and South Indian Trail neighborhoods to the north. With the arrival of European settlers, prospectors and pioneers began using the trail as well, as it connected Spokane House at the mouth of the Little Spokane River with the settlement of Spokan Falls at the Falls of the Spokane River in present-day Downtown Spokane.
Spokane Garry, a prominent member of the Spokane tribe who, as a young man, was given a European education in Manitoba, built a longhouse used as a school at Drumheller Springs in 1860. It was the first school established in what is now Spokane. The springs remained a gathering place for the Spokane people until the 1930s.
As the city grew out from its original site along the Spokane Falls in the 1880s, the springs were used to provide water for the expanding city. At this time, pioneer Dan Drumheller located a slaughterhouse in the area, using the water from the springs in the operation.
Residential development intensified in Audubon/Downriver in the early 1900s. In 1905, Frank P. Hogan and John A. Finch, early Spokane developers and businessmen, donated 33 acres to the city, which became Audubon Park. The donation was made with an agreement that the city would provide landscaping and improvements to benefit the park and Hogan and Finch's housing developments in the area. Finch Elementary, located at the northern edge, was named in his honor. When the Olmsted Brothers gave their 1908 report to the city designing the park system, they included Audubon Park. During the first decades of the 20th century, multiple streetcar lines were laid through the neighborhood. By 1923 streetcar lines stretched from downtown along Northwest Boulevard almost to Garland and from Northwest Boulevard north along Driscoll Boulevard beyond the northern bounds of the present neighborhood. Downriver Golf Course was opened in 1926 along a bend in the Spokane River.
The post-World War II housing boom brought further changes to Audubon/Downriver as growth accelerated within the neighborhood and stretching north. In 1944, Josie Comstock Shadle, the late wife of Spokane businessman Eugene A. Shadle, donated land to the city to honor her husband, that became the large Shadle Park in the northeast corner of the neighborhood. In 1957, Shadle Park High School, Spokane's fourth, was built on the park's east side to accommodate the increase in growth in and around the neighborhood. Glover Middle School, named after James N. Glover, the founder of Spokane, was built across Shadle Park from the high school one year later. To the east of Shadle Park along Wellesley Avenue, the Shadle Center was opened in 1961 and quickly became a major shopping district for the northwest side of Spokane. It was the first major shopping center outside of the city center. Shadle Center began to decline after being sold to a Los Angeles investment group in 1976. Many of the department stores that were tenants, such as JCPenney, began to shutter their doors. Competition from NorthTown Mall, about a mile east along Wellesley Avenue, proved too much to contend with. However, reinvestment in the first decade of the 21st century revitalized Shadle Center, and as of 2022, it remains one of the north side's top retail areas.
A 2003 bond measure led to the modernization of Shadle Park High School, which was completed in 2009. The Shadle Park branch of the Spokane Public Library was renovated in 2021.
Prior to 2015, Audubon/Downriver was part of the larger Northwest neighborhood. The two were split at Wellesley Avenue in 2015, with the northern half retaining the Northwest name.