The Milgard Family Trust is currently housed in the  building at 1701 Commerce . This last building on campus before Tollefsen Plaza was the site of the first passenger terminal in Tacoma for the Northern Pacific Railroad before it was moved across Pacific Avenue in 1892 to the site where Union Station ,erected in 1911, now stands as part of the Federal Court House.  The Villard Depot served the train passenger community from 1883 until 1992. The Milgard Family Trust is named for Gary Milgard who selected as a permanent member by the Horatio Alger Association Of Distinguished Americans in 2003. The members of this association mentor young and provide scholarships to high school seniors who have proven their ability to overcome childhood adversities and humble beginnings.

The building we see today was originally built in 1894 as the Teamsters and Chauffeurs hall which they used as their hiring hall for half a century.  Merit Architects bought the Teamsters hiring hall in 1979 and remodeled the building, a project that lasted three years, and used it as their architectural offices until the University of Washington Tacoma required the  property for their expansion. A number of other businesses occupied the building over the years including a bicycle shop, a sheet metal fabricator, and Pettit Oil Company, affiliated with Standard Oil, it apparently operated a number of Chevron Stations in the area including one across 17^th Street  which occupied a portion of what is now Tollefsen Plaza.

The shape and size of the building were determined by the property set-backs of the time, 1894, when it was built. Hence, the triangular shape forced by 17^th Street, Commerce Street and the Railroad’s Hood corridor all of which are easily identifiable today. This wedge shape often referred to as a keystone building

because of its resemblance to the center topmast stone in a masonry arch stands today reflected in the University of Washington Tacoma’s Keystone Building. These two keystone building form a unique relationship in my experience as they point toward each other. While there are numerous keystone building in Tacoma and across America this is the only place, again by my experience, where two of them sit in this juxtaposition. Both buildings are defined by commerce, 17^th and Hood corridor. They appear like spokes  to a circle or as if forming their own intersection which could be expanded to include connections with Duggan Hall, West Coast Grocery  building and the Joy building. This crossroads is demarked by the railroad crossing signal warning towers seems like a natural for a small square or CIRCLE  for the University landscape. Many shapes can form a matrix for building construction as well as plazas, decks, and contrived landscape features including the square, the rectangle, the hexagram and the circle as well as the nodal points of intersecting circles.

With four of the various occupants of 1702 Commerce having business that involve wheels: The teamsters were driving horse drawn wagons before trucks; the train depot depended on the wheels of trains; The bicycle shop; and the Chevron business required cars and trucks, it seems fitting that a design would include circles, wheels or some combination or intersection of such.