Having made a fortune in the Couer d' Alene mines, four Greenough brothers - Wilber D., Thomas L., Joseph W., and John B. - opened a grocery store in Mullan, Idaho in 1898. The Store was expanded to include Wallce in 1906, but soon after, the brothers sold their Idaho interest and moved to Spokane where they opened a store on the site of the rpesent Ridpath Hotel.
This Spokane store was the successor to the store of Sloane, Paine and Richmond, which was located in the Symons block on Sprague Avenue. The store was purchased in 1905 by Wilbur Greenough.
In 1918 the Greenough brothers introduced mass volume, self-service grocery shopping to the city of Spokane. In 1924 the brothers challenged Spokane Sunday closing law - the effort failed.
In 1929 the store was moved to a site at Sixth and Washington where parking was readily available. Greenough's became a supermarket, offering not only groceries and green items, but a beauty parlor, a drug store, a bakery, a soda fountain with luncheon facilities, a meat market and even a service station.
In the 1970's the Spokane freeway cut through the district and the business suffered. After a brief comeback, the store closed in 1985 due to loss of its lease.
The collection includes stock certificates and some of the journals and general ledgers of the company.
The collection consists of ledgers containing the financial records of the company. The collection is fragmentary.
The collection is arranged into 1 series: General
Collection is not restricted.
Copyright has not been assigned to the Eastern Washington State Historical Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Museum Archivist. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Eastern Washington State Historical Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher
Greenough's Grocery Records (Ms 61), Eastern Washington State Historical Society/Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, Spokane, WA.
Donated by John Weeks.
Nolan, Edward W.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) WorldCat database. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search WorldCat using these headings.