The Indestructible Old Depot
Staff at the Northern Pacific depot continued their work unbothered even as a small fire broke out in their lunch counter.
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 old N.P. depot will not even burn. The building caught fire last night, but the men worked on at their desks, all unconcerned, knowing the old wreck would never burn down. The fire department came along with a little chemical and put the whole blaze out in a minute. The fire started from a long stove pipe from the lunch counter. Incidentally, the city auto-patrol came near being wrecked by a passenger train that came up across Pacific Avenue without any headlight and with the flagman not attending to his business. The chauffeur just missed the engine by a hair.
“The men worked on at their desks all unconcerned, knowing the old wreck would never burn down.”
The Northern Pacific depot was a hub of transit life in Tacoma. Its near-total destruction and reconstruction throughout history mark the changing face of Tacoma’s waterfront and transit infrastructure.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.