TACOMA has upwards of eighty church organizations, representing all the leading religious denominations. TACOMA is the see city of the Episcopal Jurisdiction of Olympia.
The Ferry Museum occupies the fourth and fifth floors of the County Court House. It has extensive collections of natural history, art, sculpture, Indian baskets and relics, Oriental curios and the like. The Tozier exhibit is the most extensive Indian collection in the world.
TACOMA has a new public library building completed and opened in 1903, the gift to the city of Andrew Carnegie, who gave $75,000 for the building, the city providing the site. The library contains 30,000 volumes.
There are two large and well-equipped general hospitals at TACOMA, St. Joseph’s Hospital, and the Fannie C. Paddock Memorial Hospital, also a large new Pierce County Hospital. A $100,000 hospital for the employes of the Northern Pacific railway is now building. At Steilacoom is the Western Washington State Hospital for the Insane. There are three children’s homes for orphans or friendless children, and numerous benevolent and charitable institutions.
TACOMA has 800 acres of beautiful parks. Point Defiance Park occupies the northerly extremity of the peninsula on which TACOMA is built. It has about three miles of shore line on the Sound and most of it is covered with giant fir. It is a park of unusual natural beauties and attractions. Wright Park is a garden, twenty-eight acres in extent in the heart of the city, with a great variety of shrubs, trees and flowers.
TACOMA, the industrial and commercial center of the Empire State of the Coast, is an inviting field for enterprise and effort and offers boundless opportunities for the profitable employment of capital in manufactures, trade, commerce and transportation, and rich rewards for the exercise of brains and well-directed energies.
[Illustration: Decorated for Tacoma’s Rose Carnival.]
BUILDING PERMITS ISSUED DURING THREE YEARS ENDING JUNE 30, 1904, BY MONTHS.
+===========+=====================================+ | | 1901-02. | | MONTHS. +------------------+------------------+ | | DWELLINGS. | TOTAL PERMITS. | +-----------+------+-----------+------+-----------+ | | _No._| _Cost._ | _No._| _Cost._ | | July | 29 | $ 35,040 | 66 | $ 66,845 | | August | 23 | 29,990 | 47 | 59,540 | | September | 38 | 52,200 | 63 | 137,741 | | October | 30 | 21,125 | 61 | 36,941 | | November | 22 | 21,290 | 34 | 24,520 | | December | 17 | 15,800 | 25 | 31,200 | | January | 33 | 34,900 | 55 | 53,340 | | February | 37 | 46,650 | 60 | 68,900 | | March | 55 | 57,075 | 84 | 109,050 | | April | 55 | 57,415 | 96 | 104,320 | | May | 72 | 73,460 | 122 | 100,280 | | June | 36 | 46,060 | 66 | 76,815 | +-----------+------+-----------+------+-----------+ | Totals | 447 | $491,005 | 779 | $869,492 | +-----------+------+-----------+------+-----------+