100 years ago in Spokane: Trustees vow to replace hospital destroyed by fire

From our archive,

100 years ago

The trustees of St. Luke’s Hospital vowed to build a new, $1 million hospital on the ruins of the old hospital, destroyed by fire.

The project was so big they decided to do it on the “unit plan.” The initial step would be a $200,000 first unit.

Before that, the trustees had some other decisions to make. They were trying to determine if any of the old building could be salvaged and the walls, at least, could be used as the basis for the new building.

Meanwhile, they believed that at least part of the old building was sound enough to be used as a temporary hospital during construction. The trustees said they had been given permission to tear off part of the ruined roof of one wing of the hospital and replace it with a flat roof.

The trustees sounded upbeat in the wake of the disaster. “We have plenty of ground and one of the finest sites in the city for the hospital,” said one trustee, referring to the site on Summit Boulevard.

The new hospital would be “among the finest in the Northwest.”

From the murder beat: James Weston told a jury that Robert A. Hood, on trial for murdering hotel landlady Margaret Braun, “threw his arms around her neck … then began to choke her, and they struggled about and she fell to the floor.”

Weston was a crucial eyewitness, one of three men who were attempting to rob Mrs. Braun in her hotel room.