The Ferry Museum’s Fight for Wright Park
Tacoma’s park board debates the ethics of placing a commercial museum inside public green space.
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.
That great $250,000 Ferry museum building and music hall projected for Tacoma by the State Historical society and Ferry museum may not go in Wright park. President Nelson Bennett and Marshall K. Snell are radically opposed to it and gave the committee little encouragement when the matter was broached at the park board meeting last night. Mr. Craig was rather on the fence and Shaw and Heath were not present. Bennett and Craig objected to filling the park with buildings. Another objection is that the museum charges an admission fee and it is not deemed wise to introduce any semblance of commercialism into the parks.
“It is not deemed wise to introduce any semblance of commercialism into the parks.”
The tension between 'public use' and 'commercial development' within parks is as relevant today as it was in 1909. Wright Park remains a crown jewel of Tacoma, though the debate over who gets to occupy public land continues to surface in modern civic discourse.
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