![]() ![]() Above the arched openings on the west wall stand three rectangular windows with delicate iron railings enclosing balconettes supported by scrolled keystones and decorated with floral wreaths-a window treatment also found on the south and east facades. The east and west facades are three bays wide, whereas the south facade is five bays wide. The upper level has smooth walls and large arched windows that help define the bays of each facade. The main story features rusticated walls pierced by several rectangular windows and finished by a prominent stringcourse. The exterior reads as a two-story structure, particularly from the Broadway entrance, though the interior features four total levels, including a basement. He finished the building in reinforced concrete, permitting numerous architectural embellishments and, from the exterior, the appearance of stone. To help mitigate the otherwise steep incline, Champney designed the elegant “Spanish Steps” just south of the temple to provide pedestrian access from Commerce Street to Broadway, providing a south entrance into the temple on its main level as well. The building makes inventive use of its sloped site by including entrances on Commerce Street at the basement level on the east side and on Broadway on the second level to the west. In addition, the location of the Elks Temple on the northern edge of the business district, a block away from City Hall and the Northern Pacific Railway Headquarters, placed it near the heart of economic and governmental power in early-twentieth-century Tacoma. The selection of Champney as the architect for the Tacoma Elks’s opulent new building indicated the group’s desire to express its prominence and bring a European design sophistication to the city. In 1907 he came to Seattle to supervise the designs for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition as chief designer for the firm Howard and Galloway of San Francisco, and would remain in Seattle for the next 20 years. Before coming to the Northwest, he collaborated on the designs for a number of world’s fairs, including those in Buffalo (1901) and Saint Louis (1904). 174.Ĭhampney was one of the few architects in the early-twentieth-century Pacific Northwest with European architectural training, having studied at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. ![]() The once-grand structure, built on a sloping site for the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks in 1916, was designed in the Beaux-Arts classical style by architect Édouard Frère Champney for the Elks Tacoma Lodge No. Perhaps more than any other historic building in downtown Tacoma, the Elks Temple has suffered numerous false starts as it awaits a major renovation intended to return it to its place of prominence in the city. ![]()
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