"America's Car Museum" Rises In Tacoma

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

The LeMay Museum in Tacoma, WA won’t be completed until June, but the NY Times reports that it aims to become on of the premiere automotive museums in the country, rivaling collections like the Peterson and Harrah museums. And at 165,000 square feet, the building that is rising in Tacoma needs to be huge: though “only” 750 vehicles will be exhibited at a time when the building is done, the LeMay collection is far larger than that. Although even curator David Madeira isn’t sure how many vehicles actually belong to the collection.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Madeira said recently in an interview at The Times, when asked how many vehicles were in the possession of Harold LeMay, the garbage-disposal magnate whose collection of American automobiles would comprise the majority of the museum’s holdings. Mr. LeMay, who died in 2000, was prone to buying a barn or even a field containing old automobiles just to prevent their contents from landing in a junkyard. “He was not a connoisseur; he was a true collector,” Mr. Madeira said.

Once holding at least 3,500 vehicles, the collection has been cut to “north of a thousand” aimed at representing the sweep of American automotive history. And those will be joined by vehicles from the collection of watchmaker Nicolai Bulgari in order to create an automotive museum that founders hope lives up to the name “America’s Car Museum.” Since it’s right up I-5 from me, I’ll be sure to report on the collection and whether it reaches that lofty goal when it opens to the public next summer.


Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Ciddyguy Ciddyguy on Oct 23, 2011

    I agree, having grown up in that town that there really isn't much you can do to make Tacoma pretty without leveling and starting over. Sadly, it let its downtown wither on the vine and it died by the 70's when Sears finally bowed out in 1980 for its current location at the Tacoma Mall, the local People's store went out of business in 1983, they had a store downtown and out in Lakewood and Woolworths bent bankrupt years ago, and of course, their location downtown disappeared as well. But it IS a blue collar town and it shows. That said, I'm interested in checking out the LeMay museum when its finally open myself as I get down to Tacoma where Mom still lives fairly frequently.

  • Fincar1 Fincar1 on Oct 23, 2011

    I've been to lots of LeMay open houses and in addition saw the cars in some of Harold's storage buildings around Spanaway. He was quite a guy, a real car enthusiast and collector. It didn't take very much time looking at his cars to figure out that he was a Chevy guy. For instance he had a 1941 Chevy convertible in each color the factory offered...he had one or more Chevys from every year, at least from the mid-30's to 60's, including a lot of trucks. One great feature of his open houses has been that people were invited to bring and display their own cars, and a walk through the parking lots would be almost as good as seeing the cars, trucks, tractors etc in Harold's collection.. When the Museum opens in Tacoma next year it'll be great to go through that and see how many of the cars are familiar to me.

  • Sam P Sam P on Oct 23, 2011

    I don't care what the museum looks like. I do care about the fact that it's 40 miles away from me and has an amazing collection of cars. Can't wait to pay it a visit once it opens.

  • Dusterdude Dusterdude on Oct 23, 2011

    Yah, its good that museum was built, but I would have to presume that whoever approved the design is feeling some heat -- ugly is too soft a word for the building..

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