Tacoma High School, renamed Stadium High School in the year of 1913. The building of this grand structure began in 1891 for a luxury hotel to be named the Olympic/Tourist Hotel. It was designed by Hewitt and Hewitt of Philadelphia, PA., for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company and Tacoma Land Company. It was designed to rival any luxury hotel at the time on either the West Coast or the greater Pacific Northwest.The hotel was never completed due to a economic financial crash of region, with construction being halted in the year of 1893.The building was then used as a warehouse for the railroad for several years. Then on October 11, 1898, the building was a victim of a mysterious arson fire that spread rapidly and severely damaged the structure.The building was not insured. This ended all the railroad's dreams for any completion of the building.After the fire, demolitian begun on the site with 73,300 bricks salvaged by the railroad and moved to the towns of Missoula, MT and Wallace, ID. to build passenger stations.During the demolitian of the fire ruins, a worker thought the remaining shell of the building could be reconstructed into a high school building for the growing city of Tacoma. This idea became a reality and the building was aquired by the Tacoma School District for their first "stand alone" high school at the cost of $34,500.00.It opened on September 10, 1906, with a construction cost of of $300,788.00.In the year of 2004, a major 100 million dollar remodel began of the building.In September of 2006, Staduim High School celebrated the opening of the completely remodeled school, clebrating 100 years of the school.Family members, Virginia C. Reynolds, Helen Hart, and Robert E. Fletcher Lee graduated from Stadium (Tacoma) High School in it's early history.
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