100 years ago in Spokane: All cars didn’t have speedometers yet, and local officials were at odds over the good they would do

Spokane authorities had a new plan for controlling speeding motorists: requiring speedometers in all autos.

The heads of the police and justice courts had requested a compulsory speedometer law, but now city commissioner Leonard Funk was having second thoughts about it.

He said there were not enough speedometers in the entire city to comply with the proposed law, and installing them would be too expensive for most motorists.

Funk also argued that it would just give speeders an opportunity to make another excuse in court, on the lines of, “Well, your honor, the officer said I was going 30 miles per hour, but my speedometer said I was only going 20.”

“When the traffic officer swears it was 30 and the speeder has no speedometer to fall back on, Funk thinks it would be easier for the court to decide who swore to the truth,” The Spokesman-Review wrote.

From the hotel beat: Louis Davenport wasn’t Spokane’s only hotel magnate.

Victor Dessert owned three large hotels – The Pacific Hotel, the Atlantic Hotel and the Victor Hotel – and he had just bought a fourth, the Lever Hotel.

The S-R said it was “one of the largest single real estate transactions of recent years.”

The Lever Hotel was on the southeast corner of Third Avenue and Howard Street, and it had 165 rooms.

Dessert would later rename it the Pacific Hotel, and would rename the original Pacific Hotel the Dessert Hotel (later rebranded as the Desert Hotel).

The Lever Hotel transaction brought the number of hotel rooms operated by Dessert to 600. He also owned, but did not operate, the St. Regis Hotel.