As I’m finishing up my pieces for The Hoods show, I thought I would share a little bit of the process I’ve gone through. The two neighborhoods I chose were Garland and Corbin Park. Which I found out aren’t actually “proper” Spokane neighborhoods, but I went forward with them anyway since I consider them the neighborhoods in spokane I am most connected to.
Corbin Park appealed to me especially because of the history of the land. If you’ve been to Corbin Park you know it has a unique track-like shape and you may have read the historic district sign that refers to it’s history as a race track. You’ve probably noticed the beautiful early 1900’s homes with gigantic porches that surround the park. As a kid I used to walk to this park a lot since we lived close for a while. I imagined horses and their riders racing around it with well dressed turn of the century women in frilly hats watching from their big front porches drinking lemonade. It felt very romantic.
Unfortunately, what I discovered wasn’t quite as romantic. But still interesting.
Corbin Park and the land around it used to be the state fairgrounds pre-late-1800’s. The oval park that is now Corbin park was the very center of the race track. There was harness racing…and what appears to be bicycle races and foot races from the photos I found on the MAC’s archive. Not sure on the exact date, but late in the 1800’s D.C. Corbin purchased the land the fairgrounds were on. He began to plot out the homes that are now around the park and deeded the city the very center of the track. If the city made a park there, his homes would have much higher value.
When the Olmsted brothers (famous US park designers of central park) came out west to work for the city of Spokane to create a bunch of park designs. Their designs included Corbin Park which originally had beautiful flower gardens and a mirror pond. Sadly, the park doesn’t have any landscaping now, but it does have a wonderfully large amount of different types of trees. Here’s some photos I found on different archives.
Bicycle races!
Some kind of foot race?
Original floral garden glory.
Original rose gardens
When I started working on my logo I knew I wanted to capture some of the park’s interesting early 1900’s history. I also wanted to bring some of it’s current quirky youthfulness into the picture. It seems to me that a lot of younger, more progressive people have been moving in to the area and several of our neighbors have come from California because you can get a huge beautiful historic home for a fraction of what it would cost anywhere else. It’s a diverse, artistic community.
The finalized logo looks nothing like this. I went a more simple route with it. But I thought I would share this early rough draft because it went well with the background. Be sure to stop by Bon Bon next week to see the outcome!
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