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History in a House

· Posted Tuesday July 18, 2006 by jamie

The first meeting of Historic Tacoma is this coming Thursday, July 20th, from 5:30pm-7:30pm in the Olympic Room at the Tacoma Public Library Main Branch (1102 Tacoma Ave South). Here is an opportunity to take part in the preservation of our cities architectural heritage. I’m assuming this is different things for different people, be it attempting to stop the demolition of First United Methodist by Multicare, restoring the historic Elks building, or preventing the next home demolition on par with the Mattson House.

Our home, on the surface, has none of the significance of these structures. Sure, it definitely has some street appeal, but in the end it is a generic 1922 kit-style bungalow, and if you drive around town, even just down the street, you can see homes that are almost exactly the same. But at the same time, there is a history there, and it, too, can be revealed at the library. The Northwest Room a great online index of buildings, with information about the builder, relevant news articles, and any photos that have been collected. (We are not so luck as to have a photo attached to our address.) Perhaps even cooler is that if you visit the Northwest Room at the library, you can look in old Polk city directories to see who lived in your house at various times. (This site offers scans of a 1921 city directory for Tacoma.) Starting in 1928, these offered reverse lookup by address. Thus, we were able to determine who lived in our house as far back as 1925, and to trace the working class history of our home: a bookkeeper for City Light and Water, two salesmen, a department manager at West Coast Grocery, a wharfinger at the port, and then finally, in 1940, the family that would occupy the house for the next 60 years. Many houses, though not ours, were listed as vacant during the years of the Great Depression. Suddenly our home, and the others surrounding us, seem rich with history.

So we’re planning on being there for the first meeting of Historic Tacoma, to help preserve local heritage, both that which is already generally recognized and that which requires a bit more digging. We hope you will be there, too, and that maybe you will be inspired to look into the unique history of where you live.


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  1. I read a biography once that was the life story, not of a person, but of a house. The owner had researched each and every family that had lived there since it was built, and wrote a fascinating book about the joys and tragedies these people had experienced under the same roof. I wish I could remember the title now, but it was great stuff.

    — Kristy    Jul 18, 09:36 PM    #

  2. Kristy, that sounds like a really impressive book. If you remember the title, let me know.

    Imaginging something like that for our house, I think most of the folks that have lived in our house are dead, and none of the “60 year” family had kids, which would mean scanning the obituaries to look up relatives, tracking people down, etc… Sounds like a research nightmare, but I can imagine that if I had the time and the gumption it might be fascinating.

    Interestingly, the house next door to ours probably qualifies as a “character” in a book, as the son of the man who built it wrote a memoir of various life experiences, several involving growing up in our neighborhood… Definitely will be introducing this book as a future Tacoma Book Club title, once life calms down and we can dig into things.

    — jamie    Jul 19, 09:28 AM    #