100 years ago in Spokane: City moves forward with plan to rebuild crematory

From our archives, 100 years ago

Architect Arthur Cowley was selected to demolish and rebuild one of the city’s major civic institutions: the city crematory.

The plan called for two new brick buildings and three “steel-covered buildings.”

Meanwhile, another local builder, George Shea, offered to take the old 200-foot crematory smokestack and move it to a new location 150 feet away, apparently for an entirely different use. City commissioners first regarded this offer “as a joke,” but the builder said he thought he could pull it off by “the use of immense wooden braces to keep the stack from tipping over.”

The commissioners told him to go ahead and give it a try at his own expense. The new crematory was going to have its own new smokestack.

From the prohibition beat: Charles Hegstrom, 38, a restaurant worker, tried an imaginative excuse for violating the state’s prohibition laws.

Hegstrom was charged with purchasing alcohol 27 times from the Eagle pharmacy.

He told the judge that he was on his feet all day on a tile floor and needed a foot bath several times a day to soothe his aching dogs. So he purchased the alcohol not to drink, but to use as fuel in a small heater that he used to warm up water for his foot baths.

The judge did not buy that excuse. For one thing, the faucet in Hegstrom’s room produced plenty of already-hot water. He sentenced Hegstrom to 30 days in county jail.

From the gambling beat: Police raided a cigar store on Sprague Avenue and nabbed nine men on gambling and vagrancy charges.

Police said they discovered the men playing “freeze-out poker.” They also found a quart of whiskey and 30 empty bottles.