Union Station/Warehouse Historic District (Tacoma) Self-Guided Walking Tour

  • Posted 2/04/2025
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 23189
See Additional Media

The warehouse district around Union Station is a rich biography of the city told in cut stone, red brick, and heavy timber. Tacoma is a Western city born of the railroad. In its earliest years, the cutting back of the forests barely kept pace with the population and city building that seemed to pour from the railhead. By the late I880s, the city had shaped itself into the contours of the hillside above Commencement Bay. At the point where the railroad arrived, at the southern edge of the city, a tightly packed assemblage of warehouses were built to house goods coming in and organize the passengers and products being shipped out. Warehouse districts were common in most cities along the great rail lines of the West, but few have survived in the remarkably intact form of Tacoma’s. Along the Romanesque facades of the buildings and in the cobblestone and iron-railed streets of the district, the story of railroads and cities is told. 

To take this walking tour, visit HistoryLink.Tours.


Licensing: This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons license that encourages reproduction with attribution. Credit should be given to both HistoryLink.org and to the author, and sources must be included with any reproduction. Click the icon for more info. Please note that this Creative Commons license applies to text only, and not to images. For more information regarding individual photos or images, please contact the source noted in the image credit.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
Major Support for HistoryLink.org Provided By: The State of Washington | Patsy Bullitt Collins | Paul G. Allen Family Foundation | Museum Of History & Industry | 4Culture (King County Lodging Tax Revenue) | City of Seattle | City of Bellevue | City of Tacoma | King County | The Peach Foundation | Microsoft Corporation, Other Public and Private Sponsors and Visitors Like You