Happy Birthday to the Tacoma Dome!
This year the Dome celebrates its big 40th birthday and the Northwest Room was at its T-Town Expo to help celebrate. The expo was held on April 28th and 29th and featured live music, a job fair, city department booths, give aways, a live Fire Department demonstration, and the Northwest Room! We were there recording public oral histories about the Dome, exhibiting historic Dome related material from our collections, and meeting and talking with everyone that stopped by. The material we shared came from a variety of areas across our collections. We had historic dome photographs from the Tacoma News Tribune Photograph Files that chronicled the construction of the dome. Documents from the Mike Parker Papers about the proposed civic center, items from the Jacki Skaught Papers about the project's development, articles from our Tacoma Dome Clipping Files, among others!
Did you know that there were many different concepts of what the Dome was going to look like before they decided on the final building?
Click the image to the left to see what many people at the event dubbed the “Spaceship Dome”.
Do you know about the Hawthorne neighborhood that occupied the area where the Tacoma Dome is now? Click on the image to the right to read an article on the neighborhood!
Visit this link to listen to the many oral histories we recorded over both days of the event!
If you are curious to learn more about the Tacoma Dome and its history, we invite you to explore our collections, make an appointment, or give us a call! (253)280-2814
We had a wonderful time connecting with you and sharing material from our collections!
