For more than one hundred years the Tacoma Buddhist Temple, located since 1931 at 1717 S Fawcett Avenue in downtown Tacoma, has carried important ties to the city's historic Japantown both as a physical building and as an institution. Known until 1983 as the Tacoma Buddhist Church, it has long functioned as a crucial center of religious community, social life, cultural heritage, and history for Japanese Americans in Pierce County and the South Puget Sound region.