on the south side in 1929, containing 80 more rooms. The Davenport Hotel was home to one of the Pacific Northwest's earliest commercial radio stations. KHQ, which signed on the air in Seattle in late February 1922, was relocated to Spokane in September 1925, and went on the air from the Davenport on October 30 of that year. From its tower on the roof of the hotel, KHQ broadcast the first voices many people pulled from the air across the vast expanses of the Inland Northwest. KHQ featured many popular local bands, including Brill's Orchestra, led by cellist Leonardo Brill; his band, which was heard on radio on numerous occasions, performed for KHQ during the station's debut program. Also noteworthy were The Musicaladers, which included a young Harry "Bing" Crosby. KHQ radio remained a strong voice on the air for more than half a century. Both KHQ and The Davenport Hotel went dark in 1985. In 1928, Louis Davenport bought out the hotel's other stockholders. On April 26, 1945, Davenport sold the hotel and the restaurant to the William Edris Company of Seattle, for $1.5 million. Edris sold the property two years later, in 1947, to a group of three Spokane investors. The following year, two of them sold their interest to three other investors. Seattle-based Western Hotels bought out three of the investors in 1949, and bought out the fourth investor in 1953. Davenport died in his suite at the hotel in 1951; his wife Verus in 1967. Western Hotels remodeled the Davenport in the early 1960s and re-positioned it as a motel, with a motor entrance. In 1967, the owners, by that point renamed Western International Hotels, sold the Davenport to San Francisco-based John S. McMillan for $2.6 million. McMillan sold the hotel two years later, in 1969, to Basin Industries, which announced renovation plans, but then went bankrupt in 1972 when one of its owners was convicted of securities fraud. The hotel was foreclosed on by their lenders, Dallas-based Lomas & Nettleton, one of the nation's largest mortgage bankers. In 1979, former Montana governor Tim Babcock bought the hotel for $4.25 million, along with Warren Anderson, a former General Manager of the hotel. Anderson sold his interest to Babcock in 1983. Babcock had to surrender ownership of the financially ailing property back to Lomas & Nettleton in 1985, which closed the hotel immediately. Lomas & Nettleton went