St. Peter's Church is a historic church on Starr between 29th and 30th Streets in the

Old Tacoma Old Tacoma is a neighborhood of the north end of Tacoma, Washington, more commonly known as Old Town. History Old Town owes its name to the fact that it was the location of the original settlement called "Tacoma". In 1865, Job Carr built a cabi ...

neighborhood of Tacoma, Washington, United States. It was built in 1873 and added to the National Register in 1974. Old St. Peter's Church was the first church built in Tacoma and is now Tacoma's oldest existing building. The first services were held on Aug. 10, 1873. St. Peter's

bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...

is unique. The bell was a gift from the Sunday school children at St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia. It arrived in October 1874, but the church in Tacoma had no belfry. Loggers cut off the top of a tree growing next to the church and a crew of sailors used the ship's rigging to hoist it up on the stump. The rings of the tree were counted when the tree was cut, revealing that it was over 300 years old. The tree claimed fame as "the oldest bell tower in America". The original tree stump was damaged by a windstorm in 1935 and had to be replaced.

References

19th-century Episcopal church buildings Churches completed in 1873 Churches in Tacoma, Washington Episcopal churches in Washington (state) Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington (state) National Register of Historic Places in Tacoma, Washington {{Washington-NRHP-stub