100 YEARS AGO TODAY: SEPT. 15, 1912
The National Realty Co. has announced plans for a 16-story addition to the 17-story building now occupied by the company at Pacific Avenue and 125th Street. For this purpose a $1,500,000 bond issue has been authorized. For the present three stories are to be built on a foundation sufficiently heavy to hold the entire 16 stories, connecting with the present structure on the south. The two buildings are to be connected by corridors on all floors, making them in effect one building.
75 YEARS AGO TODAY: SEPT. 15, 1937
The Peoples Store, 11th Street and Pacific Avenue, is celebrating its 49th anniversary this week. The store, then a tiny institution compared with its metropolitan character today, was founded in 1888. A look backward shows that 1888 was one of the brightest years of Tacoma history. In addition to the formation of the People Store in a small two-story building, with barely enough room for two hitching posts in front, Tacoma saw many startling developments. Tacoma had its first electric street lights. The first lighting system was a sixteen-candlepower lamps on Pacific Avenue at two-block intervals.
50 YEARS AGO TODAY: SEPT. 15, 1962
The United States will have 16 astronauts working on the race to the moon by Monday. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Friday it will name nine more men to help the present seven astronauts put an American on the moon before the Russians get there. As the announcement was being prepared, efforts were made to minimize any differences of opinion between two of the present seven. Walter Schirra had complained in a television interview that outside commitments were causing John Glenn, first American to orbit the Earth, to fall behind in space work.
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