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Thea Foss Waterway

Bodies of water of Pierce County, WashingtonGeography of Tacoma, WashingtonLandforms of Puget Sound

The Thea Foss Waterway, formerly the City Waterway, is a north–south inlet of Commencement Bay separating downtown Tacoma, Washington, from the Port of Tacoma.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Thea Foss Waterway (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Thea Foss Waterway
East E Street, Tacoma

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N 47.2623214 ° E -122.4373462 °
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East E Street
98402 Tacoma
Washington, United States
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Northern Pacific Office Building
Northern Pacific Office Building

The Northern Pacific Office Building is a three-story historic office building in Tacoma, Washington that served as the headquarters of the Northern Pacific Railway's Tacoma division. Built in 1888, the brick, stucco, stone and cast iron structure stands on a high bluff overlooking the Commencement Bay harbor and extensive railroad switching yards that fan out across the tide flats below at the mouth of the Puyallup River where it flows into Puget Sound. The flats are densely developed with heavy industry that has grown up around the railroad facilities and the Port of Tacoma. The site was originally a choice location across from the Tacoma City Hall (extant and listed in the National Register) and at the north end of Pacific Avenue, the main street through the city's central business district.The building is unusual for an Italian Renaissance design. Triangular in plan to fit the street plan and the bluff. There is a four-story circular tower on the north, which widens in a series of curves and re-entrant angles to become a conventional four-story rectangular plan. The rectangular section was demolished in 1975. The remaining structure is three stories in height. A bracketed entablature continued around the tower, separating the three lower stories from the top floor and the lantern above.The foundation is ashlar stone to the first floor. There is a substantial water table with brick walls, covered by stucco. A narrow belt course divides the second and third floors from the one below. The belt rests on the capitals of pilasters that divide the wall into a series of panels.The frieze atop the third floor continues from the tower section to the four-story rectangular section. The rectangular section was demolished in 1974. The cornice, an elaborate belt course did not carry over from the tower section. The strip pilasters have a broad pediment on the second floor level. A cornice at the top of the tower conceals a gable roof. The four-story, rectangular section had a flat roof. The tower is topped with a low conical roof and lantern. There are two street level entrances. A formal entrance has a suspended canopy with double doors and a transom arch on pilasters. A second entrance is further down the street.In the early 1920s, the four-story section at the south end of the building was demolished and rebuilt for security reasons. It was demolished in 1974 to widen Pacific Avenue. A blank brick and concrete wall remains with some of the roof structure exposed.

Old City Hall (Tacoma, Washington)
Old City Hall (Tacoma, Washington)

The Old City Hall is a five-story building in Tacoma, Washington that served as the city hall in the early 20th century. The building features a ten-story clocktower on the southeast corner, facing the intersection of Pacific Avenue and S 7th Street.The building uses masonry bearing walls combined with numerous windows. The windows on the second and third floors are of equal size. The fourth story windows are arched at the top. The fifth story windows are smaller and narrower.The foundation is a local Wilkeson stone, which is light gray. The walls are eight feet thick at the base and taper to six feet at street level. They are covered with a façade of red brick faced with yellow Roman brick. These bricks are believed to have been ballast from China or Belgium or to have been imported from Italy. The tower is a freestanding masonry with a clock on each face.The building is a trapezoid in plan and reflects the Italian Villa style. Small round windows appear below the corner line; three large round windows occur below the corner on the tower.The tower's base has heavy brackets above the corner of the main structure and narrow rectangular windows on the tower body. A group of three arched windows are at the top on each side. A row of small round windows circles the tower between the arched windows and the eave line. Terra cotta decorations embellish the tower and areas of the entablature. The tower has a clock and a set of four bells. The clock and the bells were cast by the McShane Bell Foundry in Baltimore, the same company that cast the Liberty Bell. The bells is 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg) of silver bell metal. Hugh Campbell Wallace of Tacoma, who would later become the United States ambassador to France, gave the bells and chimes in memory of his daughter on Christmas Day, 1904. The pendulum of the clock, 12 feet (3.7 m) in length, is suspended on a single wire, 40 feet (12 m) in length. The mechanism is gravity run and the motors are wound electrically.