100 Years Ago in Spokane: Isolated residents of Lincoln Heights ask city to pave 29th Avenue

Residents of the Lincoln Heights district proposed that the city pave 29th Avenue between Grand Boulevard and their neighborhood.

They asked city commissioners for a 16-foot-wide paved roadway, similar to the Northwest Boulevard improvement on the north side of the city. About 600 families lived in the Lincoln Heights district. They complained that they were “isolated during the winter months.”

From the hospital beat: A fund drive to expand Deaconess Hospital was meeting with widespread approval, according to campaign leaders.

The area’s Methodist churches were taking the lead in an attempt to raise at least $100,000 for the expansion.

A local doctor said that Spokane needed at least 300 more hospital beds. People taken suddenly ill have been unable to find accommodations.

A Deaconess administrator said that even emergency cases sometimes had to be turned away.

“The other day, a a patient sat out on the lawn in a wheelchair for several hours until he could be taken home, in order that an urgent operation case could have his room,” she said. “Patients wait two or three days in a hotel.”

“The present hospital, with its limited capacity, has done more according to its size for the community, than any other institution in Spokane,” said Rev. H.C. Kohr.