Home of internationally renowned musicologist Hans Moldenhauer to be added to National Register of Historic Places

Apr. 12—Ian White used to walk home after working a long night shift downtown, admiring the historic homes in the Cannon Cliff Neighborhood along the way.

It was 2016 and White had just moved to Spokane. Like many renters, he and his partner Dustin Hall longed to have a place of their own on the lower South Hill. He'd take inventory on his walks, with the homes lit in an early morning glow, waiting to see a "For Sale" sign spring up in a front yard.

The white foursquare with the broad pillars at 801 S. Lincoln St. was the first to come available. White and Hall were out viewing the property one day when a mailman gave them a tip that would shift their focus, and shape the next phase of their lives.

"I was talking to the mailman and told him we're looking at this house, but it seems like it needs some work," White said. "And he said 'Well, if you want to buy any house on the lower South Hill, what you want to buy is 808 S. Lincoln St., right across the street.' "

It took only a couple of weeks for Hall and White to contact the owner of the green craftsman at 808 S. Lincoln, meet in person and draw up a sale agreement over the kitchen table.

They didn't know it then, but the couple had purchased the former home of noted musicologist Hans Moldenhauer, the man credited for gathering the "richest composite gift" of musical manuscripts and artifacts the Library of Congress has ever received.

"What attracted us to this house is the fact that it had so obviously been taken care of, and it is such a well preserved example of the Arts and Crafts movement," White said. "Just the tenets of that movement really resonated with us, so it was just kind of serendipity that brought us together."

The discovery sent White and his partner down a rabbit hole, wanting to learn everything they could about the man who spent his prime years gathering his expansive collection in the basement of the South Hill home.

"This project started out, honestly, just getting more information about the house," White said. "And the more we uncovered, the more we wanted to know."

It also led White to become something of a preservationist. He and his partner were members of a neighborhood effort to have their blocks designated as the Cannon Streetcar Suburb Historic District last year, and they've now set their sites on their own residence.

The Moldenhauer house will be added to the National Register of Historic Places later this year, more than 30 years after it was listed on the Spokane Register of Historic Places in 1991.

"I don't have a musical background, but the history of Hans and what he did and his life story, for some reason just kind of resonated with us," White said. "He's hanging on the wall and it's just kind of his house. I've always felt like, in owning a home like this, or any historic building, you don't really own it. You're just a steward of it for the moment. And I felt his story deserves to be recognized a little bit more."

'If he hadn't kept it, we would never have some of that music'

Moldenhauer may not be a recognizable name for the average Spotify listener, but he was a titan of his time.

Washington State University archivist Will Gregg said Moldenhauer's collection was huge, not only in literal size and the timeframe it spanned, but also in its impact on music history. Washington State University is one of several institutions internationally where a portion of the collection is held. Others include Harvard University, Northwestern University, Whitworth University and the Austrian National Library.

The thousands of items in the archive spanned European music history from the Middle Ages through the 20th century, and included works from renowned composers as well as the lesser known.

"Picture a timeline spanning the earth's geologic history," the Library of Congress' listing of the collection reads. "Now envision a scientist amassing a formidable collection of the stones, fossils, and sediment that document the big and small geologic upheavals along the way. Such an image is akin to the forty-year accomplishment of ardent music collector and mountain climber Hans Moldenhauer."

"It seems to me that it's quite unusual that someone recognizes the significance of an archive while the person collecting it is still alive," Gregg said. "It's a testament to his efforts, given how hard it must have been to collect."

Former Spokane Public Radio host Verne Windham said two key genres of Moldenhauer's collection stand out to him: the historic pieces, like the original compositions and manuscripts from renowned composers like Bach or Mozart, and the works of German composers who fled the country after Adolf Hitler rose to power.

Like many others, Moldenhauer fled his home country of Germany in 1938. A lifelong mountaineer, he put down roots in Spokane, where he could climb, hike and enjoy the great outdoors as he pleased.

It was in Spokane where he met his second wife Rosaleen, who served as his collaborator for the decades he spent amassing his collection.

"If he hadn't kept it, we would never have some of that music," Windham said. "And now it's music that's being played around the world."

There's one composer in particular that the Moldenhauers worked tirelessly to save from the dustbin of history: Anton Von Webern. Little would be known about the life and work of the Austrian composer if the couple had not spent decades researching Webern for the seminal biography the Moldenhauer's published in 1978.

"Anton Von Webern: A Chronicle of His Life and Work," was a passion project of Moldenhauer's, who was one of the first to examine the circumstances that led to Webern's untimely death at the end of World War II, when he was mistakenly shot by an American GI. Enigma followed the composer in life and after his death, which inspired Moldenhauer to shed some light on the man behind some of the most influential compositions of the Second Viennese School era.

"If there's one sentence of why he's famous, particularly in the history of music in the 20th century, it was for keeping the music of Webern alive," Windham said. "Webern was one of three really famous German composers who were doing great, extremely innovative things in the early 20th century."

Moldenhauer's work to document Webern's life, through compositions, unpublished letters and interviews with family members and friends, led to international recognition. He received honors and awards from Austria, the city of Vienna, Germany and many others.

By the time the book was published, Moldenhauer had already lost his eyesight, which made his two passions, mountaineering and archiving, that much harder. When he was diagnosed in the with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare disease that slowly destroys the retina, doctors gave him less than two years before he was completely blind.

While it would take decades for his eyesight to go, the diagnosis only made him collect more feverishly, relying on the help of those around him.

Rosaleen, who was once his piano student, was instrumental in seeing the biography to the finish line, and Moldenhauer dedicated the collection and a subsequent guidebook to the memory of his late wife after she died in 1982.

She was not the only one to lend a helping hand: Windham provided light editing, as did former Spokane Symphony concertmaster Kelly Farris. After his death in 1987, Moldenhauer's wife in his later years, Mary Moldenhauer, helped ensure the guidebook to the collection was completed.

Mary Moldenhauer, 81, now lives in the same South Hill home she and her late husband moved to after his dwindling eyesight made it too hard for him to navigate the multistory Craftsman on Lincoln Street.

Farris also helped Moldenhauer bring his collection to life for everyday Spokanites. He helped organize performances of key, historical compositions by the Spokane Symphony, some of which had gone unperformed and unpublished for centuries until Moldenhauer acquired them.

"I was very proud to have been a research assistant, and research associates for several years, to realize his mission to make the archive a living institution by performing," Farris said. "Some very significant musicians came to light because of Hans' view of preserving manuscripts."

Windham is grateful for Moldenhauer's many contributions to the local music community, including founding the Spokane Conservatory, but his lasting memory of Moldenhauer is that he was a force of nature among classical music fanatics. Windham said Moldenhauer was never shy about letting him know, in good faith, when a minor detail included in one of his public radio sets was incorrect.

"He would always listen and just split hairs, at the least, little slightly inaccurate thing that I might say," Windham said. "And I've said how much I've missed that, because it was always really exciting to see what little esoteric detail Hans was going to catch when I was kind of going a little fast and loose with the facts."

'Throughlines to history'

White now sees remnants of Moldenhauer throughout the musicoligist's former home.

There's the big street-facing window in the corner of the living room where his 1893 Bluthner piano, now housed in the state's capitol, once sat.

Signed copies of the Webern biography, and Moldenhauer's doctoral dissertation at Roosevelt University, "Duo-Pianism," both rest on the bookshelf.

On a wall in the dining room, a photo of Hans and Rosaleen overlooks the same spot where they once shared meals with friends, admirers and archivists.

In the basement, remnants of stickers with Moldenhauer's illegible scrawling still hang on the shelves where he housed his collection.

"The shelves that hold a bunch of our junk now, held a lot of his manuscripts and work," White said. "That connection to the past, I think it's really fascinating, and it illustrates just how much detail in a person's story is sometimes lost to time."

Embarking on the long process of adding the Moldenhauer house to the national register was as much a passion project as it was a duty, White said. It may be his home, but White feels like more of a steward of the property than anything.

"It's pretty cool to have the throughlines to history in just the little things, like having these books here and having his picture on the wall," White said. "I am the least musical person in the world, but my partner and I still feel some sort of connection to him, to his contributions and to the past. I guess it was just our way of paying it forward."

The house has been nominated for it's association with a noted figure, as well as a home emblematic of the Craftsman-era, said Megan Duvall, historic preservation officer for the city of Spokane.

"I think that's what kind of makes this property more special," Duvall said. "They're all special, I don't have any favorites, but this is definitely something that puts this one on the map a little bit more. Moldenhauer was doing his collecting and writing and everything else while he lived in the house, and that's an important part of the story."

Duvall said the only aspect of the application still up in the air is what level of significance will be attributed to the home when it's added to the register. The National Parks Service, which oversees the register, will decide if the Moldenhauer house will be added to the register at a local, state or national level of significance later this year.

The Spokane Historic Preservation Office has recommended it be added at the highest level, due to the international impact of Moldenhauer's work. Duvall said she's happy such a significant property is in the hands of caring owners like White and Hall.

"That's the way the best owners talk; they don't say 'This is my property and I can do whatever I want with it,' " Duvall said. "They understand that they are part of the story, but they are temporary, and the house will remain probably after we're gone."

Adding the Moldenhauer house to the National Register won't add any protections to the property; the local register ensures the house will stand for decades to come. But for White and Hall, it ensures Moldenhauer receives his much-deserved accolades.

"It kind of harkens back to that aspect of, you don't really ever own it, you're just a steward of it for the moment," White said. "And I want to help keep it in tip top shape, because it is such an amazing house and was owned by such an amazing person."