The future of 'Mary's Place': After the occupant of a home in the middle of Sacred Heart's campus died, the fate of the coveted building is uncertain

Feb. 6—The home that George Alex grew up in is full of things, but it's the memories and stories they conjure that bubble up as he tours the 116-year-old structure in the shadow of Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center.

The Rembrandt-style portrait of a young Alex reminded him of the friend, Glen Michaels, who painted it, and their days together at Eastern Washington University. The junk-filled basement was once a ballroom that hosted raucous parties when Alex was young, while his parents entertained upstairs. Then there's the picture of Zagora, the village his late mother, Mary Gianetsas, traveled from in Greece to marry Alex's father, sight unseen, on Ellis Island more than 80 years ago.

"She was a young lady living in a mountain village in Greece near the Aegean Sea," George, 88, said of his mother. "And she was poor as a church mouse, working for nothing, just enough to eat that night."

Decades later, widowed and remarried with a claim to the 4,800-square-foot stately home on Eighth Avenue, Gianetsas would refuse a purchase offer and change Spokane's skyline for good.

The hospital, which had occupied a building on the south side of Eighth Avenue across from the Gianetsas home, wanted a new building on the north side of the road, running east to west. Sister Peter Claver, who was named the hospital's administrator in 1964, paid a visit to the home in hopes of acquiring the land for the new hospital.

"She came over and said, 'Mary, we need your house,' " George said, remembering the meeting as occurring on the home's wraparound porch. Claver offered Gianetsas $200,000 for the home that she had bought 20 years prior for $18,000. George said his mom asked for $215,000.

"The nun got mad, and said, 'I'm going to knock off $5,000 a week until you decide when you want to sell it,' " George said.

Claver told The Spokesman-Review in 1970 that Gianetsas hadn't made an offer, forcing the hospital's hand in changing the new building's orientation.

"We had schematic drawings that would have used Mary's property," Claver said in the July 1, 1970, edition of The Spokesman-Review. "But the longer we waited for her to sell, the more costly it was becoming."

So the hospital opened in its current configuration, and Gianetsas continued to live there. Then her daughter, Dorothy Alex, moved in just before Gianetsas' death in 1991. Dorothy Alex, George Alex's sister, insisted on remaining in the home up until her death last month, Alex said.

Now, George Alex finds himself in a similar position as his mother did 50 years ago: the owner of a house surrounded by progress. But George Alex's attachment is to the story of his mother, not a physical place.

"Halfway through my life, I said to myself, 'I'm not going to marry any property,' " he said.

'She bought it on the spot'

Mary Gianetsas' journey to the home on Eighth Avenue was never easy.

A year-and-a-half after giving birth to George Alex, his biological father, Christo, died of botulism. The family lived in Wymer, Washington, between Ellensburg and Yakima, near the station of the Northern Pacific Railway Co., where Christo Alex worked. A dinner party the night of Feb. 13, 1935, with a neighboring Greek family included a bean salad with home-canned string beans tainted by the fatal toxin.

"My mom fed us little kids before we went there," George Alex said.

Mary Gianetsas also didn't eat any of the salad. Within a week, those who had were dead.

The mother who spoke little English had three children and a $1,500 death benefit from the railroad. She bought a boarding house and met Pete Gianetsas, who would become George and Dorothy Alex's stepfather.

Pete Gianetsas had been deeded an apartment building off Seventh Avenue and Washington Street by Sam Sellinas, owner of Spokane's Greek-American Club and a bootlegger, and George Manos, a business partner who founded the Playfair Race Track, George Alex said. The whole family moved into a one-bedroom apartment, with Pete Gianetsas leaving for two weeks at a time to work on the railroad.

In 1944, tired of living cramped in that apartment, Gianetsas asked a local real estate agent to find her a home. He had just listed the building at 104 W. Eighth Ave., and asked Gianetsas to come and take a look.

"She bought it on the spot," George Alex said.

For the first few years, teenage George Alex pushed a hand-mower across the lawn to the west of the home, around a fountain and under the watchful eye of his mother, who'd taken in boarders. One of them was a Mrs. Barnett, the mother of a pediatrician, who insisted on renting a south-facing room.

"So she could watch her son going to work every morning," George Alex said.

The lawn became a parking lot in 1947, and the Gianetsases charged a quarter to park. It's still there today, with a sign indicating "Mary's Parking" and an honor system, George Alex said, that has become less effective as time has gone on and parkers carry fewer coins in their pockets.

The children went to Lewis and Clark High School and graduated to become teachers themselves, much to Mary Gianetsas' chagrin, her son said.

"When we were getting ready for college, (she'd say), 'What do you want to be a teacher for? They don't make any money!' " George Alex said, launching into an impression of his mother.

Dorothy Alex traveled to California to teach, returning after retirement to care for her mother. She never married nor had any children, George Alex said, and when Mary Gianetsas died, she became the sole occupant of the house.

Sentimentality, or something else?

Today, George Alex looks at the paperwork, scattered books and some broken furniture in his childhood home and sighs.

"She wouldn't listen to me," he said. "I tried to get her out of here 10 years ago."

In 2001, Dorothy Alex told the newspaper she wouldn't consider selling in her lifetime, despite the disbelief of brother George, whose second career after teaching including dabbling in land development and real estate.

"For some reason, whether it's sentimentality or something else, she's just not quite ready to sell," George Alex told the paper in 2001.

"And I won't be until I'm gone," Dorothy Alex added in the story.

It's not just Dorothy Alex's sentimentality that drew attention to the home. The New York Times published a story decades ago, when Mary Gianetsas was unwilling to sell.

The answer to the fascination might be held in a popular children's story that published just a couple of years before Gianetsas bought the home. In 1942, children's author Virginia Lee Burton wrote "The Little House," a picture book depicting an anthropomorphic cottage that finds itself surrounded by city skyscrapers after beginning life in the countryside. The neglected house is eventually discovered by the descendant of the home's builder, and moved back out into the country where it's free to watch the stars at night.

Sharma Shields, a local author and bookseller at Wishing Tree children's bookstore in Spokane, said "The Little House" continues to be a favorite among customers because of its illustrations and themes.

"You understand all of its emotions, its loneliness," Shields said, "its remaining the same amidst all of this change."

The story has seen riffs in popular culture for children and adults, perhaps most famously in the Pixar film "Up!." There are distinctions between Mary's Place and the Little House, which Shields and George were quick to point out.

Mary's Place has been lived in for years and cared for, and the relationship with the nearby hospital — while strained at times due to competing desires — has been harmonious in recent years. There's even a plaque in Sacred Heart explaining Mary's Place to curious onlookers.

George said he's never read the book. His concerns about the future of the house were tied to worry about his sister, who in the last weeks of her life fell frequently, including one instance in which she pulled a grandfather clock down on top of herself.

"I'm sure it'll be here," George said of the home, while pointing to his heart. "But it's brick and mortar. Life goes on."

When the time comes

Mary Gianetsas' health declined quickly, her son said. She never made it clear what she wanted done with her house.

But on her command, he traveled back to Zagora to sell off land holdings that she had later in her life. Alex, too, has sold off much of his own property, owning just his home, a beauty parlor in town and Mary's Place.

"Little by little, she had me do everything," Alex said of his mother.

That's why he feels comfortable talking about the future of the property. He's already met with several real estate friends to try to determine what the property may be worth.

"I have a figure in my mind," George said, declining to divulge what that might be. "I've already done my homework."

Grandchildren and family will have their pick of the items in the house, including that grandfather clock and the artwork. Some of it will be sold, including the stained-glass windows on the second floor that look out over the parking lot and depict a nondescript stone manor.

Providence, for its part, will soon lease the parking lot next to the home from the Alex family.

"As of right now, there aren't any additional plans to share about future growth plans involving the property," a Providence spokesperson wrote in an email.

Whatever happens to the land and the building, George said the memory of his mother, and her shrewd approach to business, would be what lives on. After all, even Gianetsas acknowledged in 1970 that such a fate could be in the cards.

"I love my house — to keep," Mary Gianetsas told the paper. "When the time comes, if I'm ready, I'll sell the house."