Tacoma has hitherto lacked one most essential feature of a city--an opera house--and for this reason has been often denied the pleasure of listening to some of the great dramatic stars who have visited the coast. It will not be long before this will be remedied, as the most elegant opera house north of San Francisco is now in course of erection. Several of the public spirited citizens of this place recently organized the Tacoma Opera House Company, with a capital stock of $100,000.00, for the purpose of building an opera house such as the growing needs of the city require. Plans were drawn for an elegant building to cost $75,000.00, and this is now in course of construction on the corner of Ninth and C streets. The first story is of stone and the remainder of brick and terra cotta. It will have accommodations for several stores on the ground floor, and for a number of offices up stairs, and will be completed early in the spring of 1889. In all its appointments it will be elegant, and will have a seating capacity of twelve hundred. The stage settings, dressing rooms, mechanical appliances and all the accessories of a theater will be of the best pattern, and the opera chairs of the latest design. From the engraving of the exterior given on the opposite page, it will be seen that this structure will be one of the most imposing and ornamental architectural features of the city. It is located convenient to the hotels, the business portion of the city and the street car lines. With such an opera house as this, and with a population of twenty thousand people to give them patronage, the best attractions in the United States will be drawn to Tacoma as one of the regular “show towns” of the grand transcontinental circuit. [Illustration: TACOMA THEATRE.] HOTELS OF THE TERMINAL CITY.