Furniture Flies in Wild Vendome Hotel Brawl
A rowdy late-night dispute between hotel residents at 217 South D Street leads to a shower of chairs and broken windows, ending in four arrests.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
There was a lively rough-house in the early hours of this morning in the corridor of the Vendome hotel, 217 South D St., and as a result, two white people and two colored people were given lodgings in the city jail. The nature of the fight could not be ascertained, but over-indulgence in fiery liquors is supposed to be at the bottom of it. At any rate, a fracas began between the inmates of two adjoining rooms of the hotel. They shifted the scene of conflict to the hall, and before anyone realized what had happened, chairs, sofas, and all manner of home furnishings were flying through the air. A number of windows in the hotel were broken, and several heads were battered. The people arrested are Maste Beinler and Alack Stevenson, colored, and Frank Wilson and Jessie Cummings, white. They are being tried this afternoon for fighting.
“Before anyone realized what had happened, chairs, sofas and all manner of home furnishings were flying through the air.”
The intersection of South 7th and D Street is now part of the heart of downtown Tacoma's hotel and business district. While the hotel is long gone, the rough-and-tumble nightlife of the era often collided with the city's aspirations for order and decorum.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.