1925 Honorary Member Profile : Aubrey L. White

Honorary member Aubrey L. White may be the Club's best example of "giving back to the community." He is credited in an August 1940 National Municipal Review article with "giving Spokane more park land per person than any city in America." His nicknames include "The Father of Spokane Parks," "The Man Who Saved the River," and, in a October 1946 Readers Digest eulogy, "Spokane's Civic Horse-Trader." White's name graces the parkway on either side of the Spokane River west of downtown, a house in Browne's Addition, and, of course, the list of honorary members of the Spokane Mountaineers.

Born in 1869, one of a Maine farmer's 10 children, White left a New Brunswick, Canada, furniture business in 1889 to follow a brother to Spokane to jobs as a roustabout, a meat market clerk, and a bookstore clerk. In his 20's, while working in the bookstore, White spent his days-off wandering and exploring the woodlands and riverbeds inside and around the outskirts of Spokane, mapping places that would someday make great community parks.

White's next job was a representative of Spokane mining and railroad interests. This took him back east for nearly a decade. White became a member of New York City's Municipal Arts Commission for parks and boulevards in an era of great enthusiasm for urban beautification. He returned to then-booming Spokane in 1906 as vice-president of two companies, possessed of a modest fortune and ideas of what a community should have with regard to parks. He saw the problems with the costs of park acquisition in the already-developed cities of the East and became a one-man volunteer park board, acquiring lands for future parks.

One of his first projects was obtaining and creating Manito Park, on 90 acres donated by his developer-employer and others. Unable to convince city government to add Manito to the city inventory of 173 acres of parkland (all donated) while costs were relatively low, White focused on private sector assistance. His influence was aided by his financial standing, social status (in 1905 he had married a prominent judge's daughter Ethelyn Binkley), and friendship with Spokesman-Review publisher William H. Cowles, who had been along on at least one of his youthful mapping jaunts a decade earlier.

In 1907, community boosters succeeded by public vote in establishing a 10- member, nonpartisan volunteer board of park commissioners and an annual one- mill (property tax) park levy. Elected as president of the first park board, White hired the best landscape architects in the country, the Olmstead Brothers of New York City Central Park fame, to develop a park plan. This 1908 plan-in which diagonal avenues, limited building heights, street trees, and decorative squares were also recommended-was used as a blueprint and guide for development and acquisition of parks. Included, to White's surprise and pleasure, were 85 percent of the sites mapped in his youth.

As park board president, Aubrey White personally sought out property owners to obtain desirable properties for park lands, and he acquired 1,000 acres through donations, trades, and low-cost acquisition. He landed another 400 acres through pitches to developers for their undesirable lands. Under his guidance over a 14-year period, the Spokane park system grew from 273 to 2,272 acres. A big help was his "powerhouse," an influential group that included Cowles, Louis M. Davenport, John A. Finch, Joel E. Ferris, and Robert L. Rutter, whom he would invite for lunch and an afternoon drive to see proposed park acquisitions.

When Spokane's first building boom collapsed, "Horse-Trader" White persuaded owners about to lose property for nonpayment of taxes to sell to the city at a small price. He showed owners of unused railroad rights-of-way or industrial sites how they could save taxes by donating parkland. He also convinced subdivision promoters that it was in their interest to contribute unbuildable land for parks and playgrounds. Some of the properties White helped to secure through various methods included the Bowl and Pitcher, 15 miles of parkway along both sides of the Spokane River, many area golf courses, and areas outside of the city, including Mt. Spokane parklands.

Aubrey White was involved with many business activities (real estate, irrigation and banking, as well as railroads and mining), but he found time for civic affairs. His passionate pleas for parkland and city beautification are legendary. He was a consensus builder who was able to get everyone to work together. And he was involved with the Spokane Mountaineers.

The Club selected White as one of its first of four honorary members in January 1925 when this class of membership was established. (John E. Blair and A. W. Deavitt also became honorary members at that time; active member John Anderson accepted later.) White was selected for his active promotion of knowledge of the scenic attractions of the Inland Northwest and for opening his farm property on the Little Spokane River to the Mountaineers.

Avid gardener White moved out of the city onto his 15-acre Montvale Farm with his wife and four daughters in 1921 and thus was disqualified from park board membership. The city's loss was the Club's gain. The schedule of walks for October 1921 reads-

OCT 23. Walk No.214. Mr. A.L. White has invited the club to come to "Montvale", his attractive summer home on the Little Spokane....Take N. Adams car 9:04 at Wall and Riverside. Return will be over center of Five Mile Prairie. Lunch, cup, spoon, 13 miles....

With great regularity, through Walk No.1004-A on March 16, 1941, the trip to White's property appears on Club schedules.

As White transformed Montvale Farms into a garden "showplace," his business interests declined. After operating an investment company, and then a paint and wallpaper store, his friend Cowles created a position for him as the Spokesman- Review's garden and civic betterment editor in 1926. He conducted home garden contests and railed against ugly roadside advertising. The Depression-era WPA and CCC were talked into supplying workers to finish park projects and landscape unsightly railroad and highway fills. He was credited with Scout camps, walking trails, and trading post restorations. White was 77 when his last columns appeared in 1946.

Honorary member White worked almost until his death in 1948 on the promotion of improvements in the quality of life in the community. His ideas were in some ways revolutionary for their time. Undoubtedly, he would have applauded and participated in the efforts at Dishman Hills, Minnehaha Rock, and the Centennial Trail. Aubrey White knew of the immediate benefits of parks and recreation, but he also left a great legacy for future generations.

Lorna Ream and Randy Knight

(CREDITS: August 1940, National Municipal Review, Frank J. Taylor, "Spokane's Civic Horse Trader"; October 1946, Reader's Digest (condensed under title above); October 1981, Pacific NW Quarterly, John Fahey, "A.L. White, Champion of Urban Beauty"; 1912, History of the City of Spokane and Spokane County, Nelson W. Durham, "Aubrey Lee White." Photo courtesy of the Spokesman-Review.)