The brothers, George Wattson Hewitt and William Dempster Hewitt, designed an oppulent hotel for the Northern Pacific Railroad around 1890, one that would rival the great railroad hotels of the U.S. and Canada. (The Hewitt Brothers would go on to design the great Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, PA, [1904], the site of the memorable Legionnaires' Disease outbreak of 07/1976.) This The Depression of 1893 caused a halt to the expensive building campaign, and for about 3 years, the unfinished, Chateauesque building served as a warehouse. In 1896, a catastrophic fire destroyed the hotel, and the railroad began the process of dismantling the brick walls of the exterior, 73,000 of which were transported to the Northern Pacific towns Missoula, MT, and Wallace, ID to build railroad depots. With what remained, Frederick Heath designed a high school for the city, Tacoma High School, that opened on 09/10/1906. It was renamed Stadium High School in 1913, for the Stadium Bowl that opened next to it a year previously.

Frederick H. Heath renovated the Hotel into Stadium High School after a large fire in 1898;

PCAD id: 13321