From its drawn-out midcentury downturn up until the early 1990s, downtown Tacoma, Washington, was the epitome of urban decay: dilapidated, dangerous, and—save for isolated pockets of life—wholly deserted. This neglect was particularly evident along the gritty southern edge of downtown in the blocks flanking Union Station, a grand Beaux-Arts structure completed in 1911 as the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railway. Following a period of abandonment in which the building slipped into disrepair, the 1992 redevelopment of Union Station—a copper dome-topped symbol of the port city’s early prosperity, subsequent decline, and later comeback—as a federal courthouse encouraged further revitalization efforts in the surrounding historic warehouse district. Beginning in 1997 with the opening of a permanent campus for the University of Washington Tacoma (UW Tacoma) within roughly a half-dozen restored brick industrial buildings just uphill from Union Station, downtown’s adaptive reuse–driven renaissance officially kicked into high gear.