IT’S THE LAST CHAPTER of our recent jaunt to Tacoma. Today: Just a few of the magnificently restored stoic downtown buildings.

Tacoma, as you who’ve read regional history might recall, was originally developed as a Northern Pacific Railway company town. Like all the western land-grant railroads, the NP tried to control all commerce in the territories it settled. By siting its western terminus at its own town, the NP hoped for a stranglehold on the Northwest economy and on north-Pacific ocean shipping as well.

But Seattle offered a more wide-open, less regulated form of capitalism. This, along with the help of the rival Great Northern Railway (now merged, with the NP, into the BNSF), the siting of the University of Washington, and the success of a former furniture maker named Bill Boeing, secured Seattle’s dominance. Seattle became the region’s financial and cultural capital; Tacoma became an industrial and military city.

When I-5 came through town in 1965, coinciding with the opening of Tacoma Mall, downtown Tacoma was left to rot.

It took more than three decades and a series of public projects (including museums, live theaters, and a UW branch campus) to bring downtown Tacoma back.

It still doesn’t have a mainstream movie theater, or any retailer bigger than the University Book Store. But it’s got galleries, funky boutiques, antique shops, restaurants, bars, cafes, high-offices, and (most importantly) a spirit of possibility.

I’ll forever remember this Tully’s as Tracey Ullman’s pizza place in the film classic I Love You to Death.

At this “graffiti garage,” young spray-paint artists are permitted to create, then cover-up and replace, their expressions of urban individuality.

Our thanks to John Poetzel and “T.Y.D.” for recommending, and escorting me to, some of the sites shown in this series.