Built in 1899 for business and civic leader Judge John W. Binkley, the Montvale Block is historically and architecturally significant as one of the oldest and best preserved examples of a Single Room Occupancy hotel. SROs, as they were called, were a type of working-class housing popular in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, when Spokane experienced a tremendous building and population boom. Having remained empty and unused for 25 years, the Montvale Hotel was rehabilitated and reopened in 2005.