1965 was an earthshaking year for downtown Tacoma, both in a literal sense when an April quake of 6.6 rocked the city and in an economic sense when the Tacoma Mall opened in October. No building showed the withering effects more than Union Station, where Amtrak was struggling to find passengers and freight let alone the budget to patch the aging Beaux Arts copper roof. A few desperate schemes to revive the grand old station emerged, notably a quixotic “Depot Galleria” plan in 1975 that added new buildings and tarted up the 1911 depot as an 1890’s Victorian theme market. But by the early 1980’s I-705 was being planned where the east side concourse reached out to the tracks and Amtrak was building a bland little stop out on Portland Avenue. For over a century Union Station has written Tacoma’s story, thru good and bad it is our diary in a steady hand, shaken and crumbled a bit at times but still here like the city itself.
A small gallery with Jim Fredrickson in mind
tacoma history 