A building dating back more than 100 years and located near Tacoma’s former warehouse district has been nominated to the City of Tacoma’s Register of Historic Places. The former Tacoma Municipal Barn, also known as the “City Shops and Stables Building” and located at 2324 S. C St., was built in 1910 at a cost of approximately $30,000, according to the nomination prepared by Caroline T. Swope, a preservation consultant at Kingstree Studios, on behalf of Historic Tacoma.
“The Municipal Barn embodies the transitional period between horse-dominated transportation and automobiles, and is a rare example of a Craftsman style concrete building,” wrote Swope in the nomination.
Highlights from the historic nomination include:
- A grand opening on March 7, 1910, included a display of freshly brushed horses wearing pink ribbons, comments from Tacoma Mayor John W. Linck, and free sandwiches, coffee, and cigars;
- At one point, the building was home to 53 horses, six cats who kept the premises free of mice, and a goat named “Billy”;
- Manure produced by the City’s horses, and picked up from the streets by the street cleaning team, was used in residential gardens;
- In addition to holding horses, wagons, a feed grinder, and a blacksmith shop, the building also served machinists, broom-makers, carpenters, painters, and pipe-fitters;
- Building designer and City engineer Wilbur C. Raleigh was also the supervising engineer for the construction of the Murray Morgan Bridge and the Puyallup River Bridge.
Tacoma’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is scheduled to meet on Weds., March 26 at 5:30 p.m. at the Tacoma Municipal Building, 747 Market St., Room 248, to review the nomination and determine whether the building meets the criteria required to be nominated to the local historic register. If the building meets the criteria, the commission will schedule a public hearing on the nomination.
More information is available online here.
