The Fire That Killed a Hotel
A disastrous downtown blaze consumed the Star Theater, inadvertently scuttling a major quarter-million-dollar property deal.
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.
The destruction of the Star Theater Saturday night headed off a deal involving over a quarter of a million dollars and prevented the building of a great hotel in this city. Saturday the terms of a deal were made by which Jack Donnelly was to transfer the Star Theater and other property to Dave Gross and receive from Gross his residence and the brick block at the corner of Nineteenth and Pacific Avenue. In the Nineteenth and Pacific block, there has been no business since the Davis-Smith company moved out. Mr. Donnelly intended to remodel it, put two stories on top to make about 250 rooms, and then fit it up for a first-class hotel. The destruction of the theater blocked the deal. Gross refuses now to go through with it. The Star Theater lies a mass of charred and twisted ruins, the result of one of the hottest and most rapid fires that ever occurred in the downtown part of Tacoma. The fire started Sunday morning at 2:50. Before water had been turned on the blazing building, the entire roof of it was a single mass of swirling fire. Assistant Chief Lindsay saw the futility of saving the building and instructed his men to train the water on adjoining structures. The roof and side walls of the theater soon collapsed. By 5 o'clock the entire building had been razed to the ground. The loss on the building will amount to $6,000, covered by $4,000 insurance. The contents of the theater, including the wardrobes of the players, two sets of scenery, and several valuable manuscripts, amount to about $9,000, with no insurance.
“The Star theater lies a mass of charred and twisted ruins, the result of one of the hottest and most rapid fires that ever occurred in the downtown part of Tacoma.”
This piece highlights the precarious nature of early 20th-century downtown real estate, where a single fire could halt major redevelopment ambitions. Today, the corner of 19th and Pacific remains a central node in Tacoma, though the era of grand, independent hotel 'blocks' has shifted toward contemporary urban density.
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