Haunted Davenport Hotel, Spokane: Ellen McNamara, the Lobby Skylight and Louis Davenport's Ghost

The Historic Davenport Hotel fills a block of downtown Spokane at Post and Sprague, a 1914 landmark designed by Kirtland Cutter for restaurateur Louis Davenport. Its Spanish-style lobby, with a mezzanine running around a glass skylight, was known for decades as Spokane’s living room. The hotel closed in 1985, came close to demolition, and reopened in 2002 after a painstaking restoration. Today it is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Davenport is one of the few haunted hotels where the main ghost story can be checked against a newspaper. A New York widow named Ellen McNamara really did fall through the lobby skylight in 1920, and the hotel’s own communications director dug out the archive reports to prove it. Staff and guests also talk about Louis Davenport himself, who lived and died in the hotel. It is the best-known haunted hotel in eastern Washington and one of the grandest on our list of haunted hotels in Washington.

The ghosts of the Davenport Hotel

Ellen McNamara and the skylight

Ellen McNamara was a 68-year-old widow from New York, touring the West with her sister and two cousins in the summer of 1920. On the evening of Wednesday, August 17, she was not feeling well and stepped out onto a third-floor walkway for air while her party ate dinner in the Isabella Room downstairs. She went through a door into the pagoda that covered the lobby skylight, walked off the workers’ catwalk and onto the glass.

The glass gave way and she fell into the lobby court below, in front of roughly 100 people. The Spokesman-Review reported that she had tried to cross the court by the skylight, “thinking the glass strong enough to bear her weight.” She briefly came to and asked, “Where did I go?” A doctor who was dining in the hotel examined her, and she died about an hour later in her room. She was due to leave for Glacier National Park the next morning.

The woman on the mezzanine

For decades, staff and guests have described a woman in 1920s clothes leaning over the lobby railing, as if she is looking for someone below. In 2022, front desk supervisor Ally Boone told the Spokesman-Review that night-shift employees report a woman in a white dress wandering the mezzanine. “I haven’t seen her personally, but I believe it,” she said.

In 2005, on the 85th anniversary of the fall, the hotel’s communications director Tom McArthur said the ghost story was “based in fact” after checking the archives. He marked the date with a rose on the lobby mantel and a champagne toast. A former employee who had lived in the hotel said that if you listen closely, you might hear her ask where she went.

Louis Davenport

Louis Davenport made his name with a restaurant he ran after Spokane’s 1889 fire, then built the hotel around it. He ran it for more than 30 years, sold it in 1945 and died in 1951 in the suite where he lived. Guests and staff say he still walks the building.

A front desk flyer described his appearances as playful and benevolent, and said the hotel still has Mr. Davenport’s “spirit of service.” His old room is one of the two rooms ghost seekers ask for most.

The bellhop, the cigar smoker and other stories

The 2005 Spokesman-Review piece listed other spirits linked to the hotel: a bellhop who vanishes, and an invisible cigar smoker whose smoke is smelled with no one in sight. These are passed on as staff lore rather than tied to named people.

In 2025 a local ghost hunter touring the hotel with the Spokesman-Review claimed to have met Bing Crosby’s ghost outside the Marie Antoinette Ballroom. Crosby did grow up in Spokane and played the hotel early in his career, but he died in Spain in 1977, and the claim is one person’s account. The same article recalled a darker chapter: in 1973, a 25-year-old hotel employee named Archie Gonia was murdered on the 12th floor.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The lobby mezzanine: The railing above the lobby, where the woman in 1920s dress is seen looking down. It is a public space, open to visitors.
• The lobby skylight: The glass roof Ellen McNamara fell through in 1920. Stand under it and look up.
• Louis Davenport's old room: The founder lived and died in the hotel; staff say ghost seekers often request his room.
• The Circus Room: The other room the front desk says ghost hunters ask for by name.
• The Hall of the Doges foyer: The quiet second-floor foyer outside the Venetian-style ballroom, where a 2025 ghost tour sensed a presence.

History of The Historic Davenport Hotel

Louis Davenport took over a small restaurant in Spokane after the great fire of 1889. It grew into the celebrated Davenport Restaurant, which Kirtland Cutter remodeled in 1904 in Mission Revival style, adding the Hall of the Doges ballroom. The restaurant is one of the places said to have created the Crab Louis salad.

A group of Spokane businessmen formed the Davenport Hotel Company in 1912, and Cutter designed the hotel next door. It opened on September 1, 1914, at a cost of about $2 million. It was among the first hotels in the country to be air-cooled throughout, piped chilled water to every room, and had kitchens that could serve around 4,000 meals a day. Additions followed in 1917 and 1929, and radio station KHQ began broadcasting from the building in 1925.

For decades the Davenport was where Spokane celebrated. At least ten U.S. presidents stayed, among them Theodore Roosevelt, Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, along with Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Babe Ruth, Clark Gable and Queen Marie of Romania. Bing Crosby played here with his early band, the Musicaladers.

Davenport bought out the other stockholders in 1928 and sold the hotel in 1945. After that it passed through a series of owners and lenders, was remodeled with a motel-style refit in the 1960s, and slowly declined. It closed in 1985, and demolition was discussed. A citizens’ group, Friends of the Davenport, formed in 1986 to save it.

Developers Walt and Karen Worthy bought the block in 2000 for $6.5 million and spent tens of millions restoring the lobby, ballrooms and guest rooms to their 1914 look, removing the Hall of the Doges and reinstalling it above a new entrance. The hotel reopened in 2002 and now runs as part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, with around 284 rooms and suites.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Go up to the mezzanine late in the evening, when the lobby is quiet, and look down over the railing toward the Sprague Street side.
• Call the hotel directly if you want Louis Davenport’s old room or the Circus Room; online booking will not let you pick them.
• Even if you are not staying, you can walk through the lobby and see the skylight; it is open to the public.
• Visit in mid-August if you want to be there on the anniversary of Ellen McNamara’s fall, August 17.
• Pair Spokane with a night in Port Townsend at Manresa Castle, Washington’s most famous haunted castle hotel.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Haunted places in Spokane: more of the city’s ghost stories
• St. Ignatius Hospital, Colfax: a famous haunted hospital about an hour south
• Manresa Castle, Port Townsend: Washington’s best-known haunted castle hotel
• Hotel Sorrento, Seattle: Room 408 and the Alice B. Toklas legend
• Haunted hotels in Washington

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Spokesman-Review: Davenport ghost has roots in fact (2005)
• Spokesman-Review: Is it haunted? Spokane businesses offer glimpses (2022)
• Spokesman-Review via Yahoo: Paranormal activity in Spokane? (2025)
• HistoryLink: Davenport Hotel (Spokane)
• Wikipedia: The Davenport Hotel

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