The pickles and potato chips are ancient history. The same goes for the famed chili and all the other pantry staples — from canned soups to peanut butter and tubs of mayonnaise — that helped give Tacoma’s Nalley Valley its name.
But more than a decade after the company Marcus Nalley founded in 1918 closed up shop, one building — which predated the non-perishable food giant’s emergence in Tacoma and was originally used for a far more somber entrepreneurial endeavor — continues to give the area its storied, industrial feel.
Speed past the Nalley Valley, as most people do, and you can miss it: the towering brick facade of the Willamette Building cutting a figure across the gaping ravine. Constructed in 1907, long before the Interstate sliced Tacoma in two, the testament to the city’s blue-collar roots has provided a distinct sense of place in a part of town that, through…
