Foss Waterway Seaport — Attraction in Tacoma

We were married at a nearby church and had our wedding reception at Foss Waterway Seaport. Long before we were planning our wedding, we had always admired the Seaport building. It is conveniently located, right on the water, and the building itself is gorgeous with floor to ceiling windows at the front. It wasn’t until we started planning that we looked into the price and realized how competitively priced it was for wedding venues in the area. We are so grateful we were able to book our dream venue. They staff are super helpful. Our initial walk-through with Earla (who was so kind and informative) left us with a great first impression. Adrienne and Maria were very responsive and accommodating to our many questions we asked over the months leading up to our wedding. Amber joined the team shortly before our wedding date and was there for big day and also helped us the day before when we dropped all the reception decorations and centerpieces off. It was so awesome that they allowed us to deliver those items the day prior. The Seaport is a beautiful venue that easily and comfortably accommodated our 260 guest wedding. Because the venue has a ramp leading down to the dock we were able to leave the reception via our boat (which we moored the night prior). Foss Waterway Seaport presents opportunities for distinctive ideas to be carried out. The boardwalk is a beautiful spot for sunset pictures (fortunately on our wedding day the mountain was out!). What is also uniquely cool is that the wooden boats are pushed to the sides for events, so they are still visible to guests. The only thing that we were a little bit anxious about was the fact that set-up can’t begin until 4pm (when the museum closes) and our cocktail hour began at 6pm, leaving only 2 hours for setup. But with the confidence I had in our wedding reception coordinator and her team, as well as the Seaport staff, they had everything setup and ready by the time guests arrived. Thank you to everyone at Foss Waterway Seaport for making our day so special and memorable. We highly recommend this venue to anyone looking for a large, accommodating, beautiful, and unique place...

Such a little known hidden gem in Tacoma. By little I mean a gigantic 40,000 sq. foot, 100+ year old former warehouse which used to be a grain seaport (arrival by train, departure by boat) along the Tacoma waterfront.

There is so much history under one roof here, it's staggering. It appears that a lot of the artifacts were donated or sourced locally, and it was all so damn interesting. For example, the "Poggie Club Finals August 15th, 1937" -a framed b/w photo which has about 50 people each holding up salmon, some larger than 3ft, on one of Washington's beaches.

I especially enjoyed their Kalakala exhibit, with accompanying video. I totally remember when it was moored down the street from gas works -but I had no clue about the vibrant history of the shop or the unfortunate dismantling of the ship. They even had a time lapse of the ship being ripped apart for salvaging.

And the boats, so many boats. If you are into wooden boats, you will love the history in this space.

If you have a choice between the Glass museum or here -definitely goto the FoSs Waterway Seaport. It was 1000x more interesting, and I spent at least double/triple the time here.

Free for...

I’ve been to the Foss Waterway Seaport many times in the past for different events and always thought it was a pretty cool spot. Recently, I went back for a work event, and one of the first things that bummed me out was that the whole building wasn’t open for viewing — I remember there being some interesting marine life displays that I was hoping to see again.

It was a dress-up event, and it quickly became uncomfortably hot inside. While I love all the windows and natural light, the sun just ended up making it feel like a greenhouse. It was actually much cooler outside by the water, and eventually most of the guests ended up out there to escape the heat — though the poor DJ was still stuck inside playing music in the heat.

The food that was provided was okay at best — I’d give it about a 2.5 out of 5. Overall, it’s still a unique venue with a nice location by the water, but the heat inside made it hard to fully enjoy this...