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    Tacoma's Proctor District
    Tacoma's Proctor District
    Tacoma's Proctor District
    Ebook173 pages59 minutes

    Tacoma's Proctor District

    By Caroline Gallacci and Bill Evans

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    When Allen C. Mason launched his Point Defiance line in the early 1890s, the Proctor area became one of Tacoma’s first streetcar suburbs. Before this time, Tacoma’s North End was a remote, unsettled region populated only by those visiting the city’s horseracing track. After Mason established a streetcar stop at the intersection of North Twenty-sixth and Proctor Streets—near the racetrack—businesses began to line the thoroughfare. By 1900, houses had been constructed within walking distance of the line, and a residential neighborhood provided the impetus for the construction of schools, a firehouse, churches, and a library. By the 1920s, the neighborhood had expanded and changed to reflect the introduction of the automobile as well as the district’s popularity with University of Puget Sound students studying nearby. The community spirit that emerged then continues to this day.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439634271
    Tacoma's Proctor District
    Author

    Caroline Gallacci

    Author and Tacoma resident Caroline Gallacci is the cofounder of the Tacoma Historical Society and has been an adjunct professor at various local colleges and universities. In this unique collection of vintage photographs selected from the private collections of local photographers, Gallacci provides a glimpse of the people and places that played a part in Tacoma's unique maritime history.

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      Book preview

      Tacoma's Proctor District - Caroline Gallacci

      reproduce.

      INTRODUCTION

      In 1883, when Allen C. Mason arrived in Tacoma, he would have seen an embryonic city rather than the urban metropolis that builders envisioned in their dreams. Standing downtown, he might have looked north to the forests beyond the extant New and Old Tacoma settlements and wondered if his future would be there. After all, the Northern Pacific’s Tacoma Land Company controlled most of the property downtown, and Mason wanted a development of his own. Legend has it that he came to Tacoma with only a few cents in his pocket, but was able to turn his spare change into a fortune only to lose it again in 1893 when an economic depression struck the world.

      Within six years, when Mason was only 34 years of age, he had started to put his development dreams into reality. Establishing a newspaper headquartered in Old Tacoma, he used it to advertise his North End land developments. He platted land, donated a park to the City of Tacoma, and antagonized the Northern Pacific Railroad Company by promoting Old Tacoma as the area where commercial development should really occur. He envisioned tree-lined boulevards emanating out from his perceived downtown in Old Tacoma and built houses in the North End that showed his concept of a beautiful neighborhood. If urban planners were present within the world concept in 1889, Allen C. Mason would have been one.

      In the 1880s and 1890s, the area located north and west of Tacoma’s downtown was forested, and there were no graded streets. Mason therefore began with the obvious notion that public transportation was needed to get people to and from his proposed development in the North End. The result was the Point Defiance streetcar line, which ran from downtown to his platted land. The route crossed gulches where Mason built bridges and then wove through the forests to the end of the line. At first, wood-burning steam-driven engines pulled the trolleys and wood yards situated along the line provided the fuel. One such yard lay on what would become North Proctor Street, and it—along with a planning mill that arose close to the site—marks the beginning, in 1890, of the Proctor District.

      Mason’s streetcar route traveled west along modern-day North Twenty-sixth Street and then made a sharp north turn onto what was originally called Jefferson Street. Some of the first users were probably horse racing advocates who got off near this turn to walk a ways south to the track once situated where the Safeway store is now. Once such a stop was established, business entrepreneurs could easily see the potential of building any kind of commercial enterprise to attract the rider. Businesses would draw more businesses, and then families would come to build houses away from what many saw as the steamier side of Tacoma’s downtown. After families came churches and schools—the symbols of a settled community.

      In this manner, the Proctor streetcar suburb was formed. Though providing the site of the original wood yard, the records do not reveal the name or location of the first businesses in the district. Recorded time in the neighborhood began with the 1890 establishment of the first Mason Methodist Episcopal Church that early Sanborn Insurance maps show on the southwest corner of North Proctor and Thirty-second Streets. Washington School followed in 1901, meaning that at least by this time there were a substantial number of both Methodists and schoolchildren already present in the neighborhood.

      By the outbreak of World War I, the essence of the Proctor District became clearer. Wood-framed business blocks stood at the key corner of North Twenty-sixth Street, including shops like Washburn’s Market and Wilmot Ragsdale’s Proctor Pharmacy. The future site of the North End Tavern and the Steak House sat farther down North Proctor at the corner of North Twenty-seventh Street. Owners and developers constructed a wide array of houses ranging from small cottages and Beaux Art bungalows, whose designs were drawn from pattern books, to architect-designed residences housing some of the city’s well-known entrepreneurs. By 1911, the neighborhood also had its own fire station.

      The automobile began to change the appearance of the Proctor District streetcar suburb beginning around 1918. The transition between the two modes of transportation is seen in photographs where Ford Model Ts share the streetscape with streetcars. Gradually, however, the roads were transformed, first through the use of creosoted Douglas fir woodblocks and then through asphalt. When parking became a challenge, some builders pondered the possibility of putting lots on the roofs of their new buildings. The automobile also invited a new phase of construction in the Proctor District. Brick business blocks replaced and added to the older wood structures. Service stations and car dealerships appeared, some professionally designed. The neighborhood sported two silent and then sound motion-picture theaters. And as a sign of the growing number of schoolchildren in the area, Mason Intermediate School opened in the fall of 1926.

      The purpose of this history is to provide the essence of Tacoma’s Proctor District from its origins in the North Tacoma woods to more recent times. Chapter one introduces the reader to the district’s beginnings, explains Allen C. Mason’s role in the endeavor, and determines why Proctor became the moniker for the neighborhood. Chapters two and three offer a portrait of the district’s transformation from a streetcar suburb to one dominated by the automobile, showing primarily the business development along North Twenty-sixth and Proctor Streets. Featured in chapters four and five are the specific institutions, including schools, that have made the Proctor District the unique entity that it is today. Neighborhoods are living places with people, and in chapter six, the reader is introduced to some of them. Several of the streetcar stops located east and north of the Proctor neighborhood are highlighted in chapter seven. Finally, chapter eight brings the story closer to

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