The Northern Pacific Railroad Plans Tacoma's Expansion
Railroad executives visit to strategize the massive redevelopment of Tacoma's waterfront and terminal infrastructure.
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.
T. F. Oakes, Vice President and acting manager of the Northern Pacific Railroad, arrived in Tacoma last night to gather information for the company's planned terminal improvements. Both the Northern Pacific and the Tacoma Land Company are coordinating a system to develop the waterfront, including wharfage and industrial sites. Mr. Oakes held a conference with the City Council, General Sprague, and Colonel Smith to plan the improvement of Pacific Avenue. The project, funded equally by the Northern Pacific and the Tacoma Land Company, involves widening the street by cutting away the bluff and cribbing the bay side, alongside building a broad sidewalk from the hill to the dock.
“With miles of water front, yet the engineers have difficulty in laying out a system suitable to a great commercial city.”
The massive railroad-led regrading of Tacoma's bluff is a precursor to the ways corporate industrial interests would physically reshape Pacific Northwest cities for the next century. Today, Tacoma's downtown waterfront remains a site of constant negotiation between modern urban transit, historical preservation, and the remnants of these turn-of-the-century industrial footprints.
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