The Ruins on the Hilltop
Tacoma’s newspaper calls for a new high school, suggesting the city convert a blighted hotel site into a centerpiece for civic growth.
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.
Tacoma needs a new high school building and needs it badly. The edifice now in use is totally inadequate for present needs, to say nothing of the needs of the next few years. The city cannot afford to be without proper high school facilities, any more than it can afford to be without other public utilities. People seeking new homes nearly always inquire about the schools and the churches. Good schools and enough churches are strong aids to building up any city. Tacoma has plenty of both, with the exception that its high school is cramped for accommodations, and its condition is steadily growing worse. Let us take it for granted, then, that the people will vote to empower the school board to issue $150,000 worth of bonds for the erection of a new and adequate high school building. Then, as to location: Why not take the old Tourist Hotel ruins and transform an eyesore into a thing of beauty and a great advertisement of the city? Every stranger who sees Tacoma for the first time gazes upon those hilltop ruins and wonders what manner of town it is that permits them to remain there year after year. Such toleration looks like an evidence of stagnation or even of decay, whereas nothing could be farther from the truth. The city could well afford to get these ruins torn away at its own expense, rather than to allow them to remain. How much better, then, if the city could put in their place a magnificent high school building, which, placed upon a pinnacle where all may see it, will not only furnish needed accommodations for the high school pupils, but likewise will testify to the new growth and thrift of this flourishing city.
“Every stranger who sees Tacoma for the first time gazes upon those hilltop ruins and wonders what manner of town it is that permits them to remain there year after year.”
This 1904 editorial highlights a perennial tension in Tacoma: the struggle to balance rapid population growth with the need for modern public infrastructure. The 'Tourist Hotel ruins' mentioned were the skeleton of a failed real estate venture, serving as a reminder that Tacoma's urban identity has long been caught between ambitious development and the persistent decay of abandoned projects.
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