A former chicken farmer who could think up 120 positive statements about Tacoma, then pay to publish them in newspapers across the U.S. probably deserves a bronze statue in his honor.
Allen C. Mason will get one – 124 years after he arrived in Tacoma.
More than that, however, a full corner of North 26th Street in the Proctor business district will get transformed into Mason Plaza, including Mason’s statue and six Wilkeson sandstone columns that originally held up the portico to Mason’s 1892 North End mansion.
Imbedded in the inlaid brick plaza you’ll find a cast-bronze replica of Mason’s Star of Destiny. Or as he called it, “Tacoma’s Star of Destiny.”
At the center of the star sits Tacoma. Mason arranged his glowing pronouncements about Tacoma as the rays radiating out from the star’s center.
The star became the centerpiece of Mason’s 1880s advertising campaign, which cost him $5,000 a month, to sell Tacoma to the rest of the United States.
Some of the sayings still apply, sort of: Gateway to Mt. Tacoma and Paradise Valley. One of the Most Remarkable Harbors in the World. No Tornados Nor Hurricanes. Less Average Rainfall Than Chicago. Conservatively and Intelligently Managed.
But most focused on Mason’s primary strategy to persuade people to move here by talking up the booming economy and job prospects across the shipping, lumber, rail and steel industries.
When you tally the business and civic contributions of Tacoma’s past and present notables, Mason must rank near the top. At least the Tacoma Daily Ledger thought so in 1920, writing that Mason “is universally recognized as having done more for the upbuilding of Tacoma than any other of its citizens.”
“He was an enormous entrepreneur and booster for Tacoma,” said Jim Hoard, current president of the Tacoma Historical Society.
So the Proctor District Association and the Historical Society this week launched the public fundraising campaign for Mason Plaza. Through public and private grants and government earmarks, the group already has raised about half of the $272,000 budget.
The Tacoma Public Library, which owns the Adams Street corner where the plaza will sit, has agreed to accept and maintain the memorial. That makes sense. Mason built a library bigger than his nearby house, stocked it with 6,000 books and invited the neighborhood and the city to use it.
On Saturdays, Mason and his wife, Libbie, opened their home to Tacoma. The record shows that many – from Tacoma’s upper and lower classes – would come to enjoy the food, the grounds and the sweeping views from the precipice overlooking Commencement Bay at North 43rd Street.
The Mason Plaza project will become a must-see attraction in the Proctor business district, which grew up around Mason’s original streetcar line, said Joe Quilici, former director of Tacoma’s Planning Department, Proctor businessman and chairman of the Mason Plaza project.
Students from Mason Middle School will visit the plaza as part of their civics lessons, according to a letter from the principal endorsing the plaza concept.
That would please Mason, who had a passion for learning. As a young school principal himself, author of two textbooks and graduate of Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Ill., Mason read Midwest newspaper advertisements and Northern Pacific Railroad promotional literature about the booming Pacific Northwest.
Ostensibly, Mason moved West for his health, though his personal prosperity and that of his adopted city benefited greatly.
In May 1883, Mason, his wife, their children and his in-laws arrived by train. After renting a home near downtown and paying the freight to ship their household goods to Tacoma, Mason had $2.85 left in his pocket. He rented a shabby center room in a two-story downtown building, where he started his real estate office.
While the Northern Pacific owned and sold most of the land closest to downtown, Mason had a different idea. What if he platted new neighborhoods farther north, along the bluff overlooking the bay, and built a steam-powered streetcar line from Division Avenue all the way to Point Defiance? So he did. He made $10,000 his first year in town.
Although he didn’t make much money off the streetcar business, he made a fortune selling the real estate along the route.
With his wealth, Mason bought and ran the Tacoma Daily News for a few months. He built a gas works in Olympia, a downtown block in Fairhaven near Bellingham and an opera house in Yakima. He invested in irrigation canals in the agricultural Palouse country of Eastern Washington. He funded a lobbying dinner for congressmen in Washington, D.C., that greased the federal legislation to make Point Defiance into a city park.
But Mason’s fortune, and the fortunes of many others, evaporated in an economic bust in 1893. Mason couldn’t pay the remaining $16,000 mortgage to keep his mansion. But the mortgage holder who assumed ownership allowed the Masons to live there as caretakers.
The mansion got torn down in 1922 to make room for a Weyerhaeuser family mansion. Today the Northwest Baptist Seminary occupies the site. Those six sandstone columns stood in a seminary garden until 1999, when seminary leaders donated them to the Proctor District Association for some kind of memorial to Mason.
Gig Harbor sculptor Paul Michaels, who will create the bronze sculpture of Mason, kept the columns in storage until their recent move to a Tacoma warehouse to dry before restoration.
Quilici hopes to raise the money and complete plaza construction by November to honor an entrepreneur and real estate agent. Or, as Mason historian and former Tacoma City Councilman Tom Stenger calls him: “Tacoma’s Super Salesman.”
Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785
dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com">dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com
ABOUT Mason Plaza
To see drawings of what the finished Mason Plaza will look like, go online to www.proctorbusinessdistrict.com and click on “Allen C. Mason Plaza.”
To make a tax-deductible donation to the fundraising effort, make checks payable to Tacoma Historical Society, PO Box 1865, Tacoma, WA 98401.
For more information, contact project manager Joe Quilici at masonplaza@gmail.com">masonplaza@gmail.com or 253-759-0077.
