There’s one thing you don’t see a lot of in downtown Tacoma: construction cranes. Not to say that the city isn’t thriving. It clearly is. Instead of tearing down older buildings and replacing them with McSkyscrapers, however, the trend here is to take existing buildings and retrofit them to current needs. As a result, the downtown area is like a museum of late 19^th to mid-20^th Century architecture. My current favorite building is, in fact, vacant. It’s the 1916 Elk’s Temple. All three stories and one city block of it. With its white Belle Époque façade and smallish windows, it retains an aura of inscrutability and intrigue. What goes on inside those walls? Currently the perimeter of the building is girdled with chain link fence; vagrants must go elsewhere for the night. It’s as if the old temple is being given breathing space to ponder its next move.

Josh

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