Cambern Dutch Shop Windmill

A bakery's advertisement from the 1920s still turns the corner of a Spokane neighbourhood street, complete with an octagonal tower and four windmill blades. The building at 1102 S. Perry Street, now a herb and natural-foods shop, was built in 1929 and designed by Charles R. Wood, according to Historic Spokane, the city and county preservation office. Its record describes a frame structure: a one-story, hipped-roof rectangular shop with an octagonal tower carrying the blades. It calls the form a striking architectural novelty in a neighbourhood otherwise made up of bungalows and cottages.

The windmill began as sales promotion. The record says the shop reflected the growth of a wholesale bakery and dairy business established in Spokane in 1924 by the Cambern brothers. The Spokesman-Review reported in 2007 that the shops sold dairy products, baked goods and about 150 varieties of pastries under a "Dutch Main" label, and that Wood designed 13 such buildings, of which nine were built. The business failed during the Great Depression, and by 1943 most of the windmill structures had been sold and nearly all demolished.