100 years ago in Spokane: Local wrestler no match for ‘The Tarzan of the Mat’

Martin (or Marin) Plestina of Chicago (“The Tarzan of the Mat”) defeated Mike Howard of Oregon (“The Wrestling Nonpareil”) in a heavyweight wrestling match at the city’s most elegant theater, the Auditorium Theater.

The crowd was solidly behind Howard, the Northwest man, but Howard’s better technique was of no avail against Plestina’s sheer brawn.

While Howard got Plestina “in a nasty place time and again,” the champion “would merely exert himself to a strong effort and simply walk out of trouble,” The Spokesman-Review wrote.

The first fall took an hour , 15 minutes, and the second and decisive fall took only 17 minutes due to a “reverse body hold.”

From the construction beat: Local terra cotta earthenware stone was responsible for some of the finest buildings in the Northwest, according to a full-page ad from the Washington Brick, Lime & Sewer Pipe Co. of Clayton, Wash.

Their big plant in Clayton produced terra cotta for the Federal Building in Boise, the Heffernan Building in Seattle, the Belmont Apartments in Victoria, B.C., the Deaconess Hospital in Great Falls, the Elks Temple in Pendleton, and the Crescent Store in Spokane, among many other buildings.

According to the ad, it was “the only material that affords the architect unlimited scope for the interpretation of his aesthetic ideas.”