Northwest came while he was still working in Cleveland, when banker Henry Failing commissioned him in mid-1879 to design River View Cemetery in Portland, Oregon, designs for which Schwagerl finished by that December. In addition to laying out the cemetery grounds, he designed several buildings, including a chapel and receiving vault (pictured), but these were never built. The cemetery design was favorably received, with one review calling it "the most beautiful cemetery on the Pacific Coast." Schwagerl returned to Cleveland after a further proposal to lay out the grounds of City Park (now Washington Park) was not accepted. Washington He returned to the Northwest on a more permanent basis by 1889, when he was working in Tacoma designing the Lucius Manning residence. The following year, Tacoma's park board selected Schwagerl to design a public park (now known as Wright Park) on 27 acres that had been donated by Philadelphia-based financier Charles Barstow Wright. He also surveyed, mapped, and created designs for Point Defiance Park on land that had been recently ceded to the city of Tacoma by the federal government. Political differences in Tacoma, including concerns over the cost of the parks, led to Schwagerl being dismissed, and his friend Eben R. Roberts was appointed superintendent to oversee completion of the projects. By May 1892, Schwagerl had been named Superintendent of Parks in Seattle. He oversaw the completion of Kinnear Park and was responsible for the design of the plantings and other amenities. He also revised the design of Denny Park "along formal lines with prettily conceived walks, mounds and sloping lawns, ornamented with clusters of trees, shrubbery and flowering plant which thrive," although the modern park was redesigned after being leveled as part of the Denny Regrade. He made some of the early improvements to what is now Volunteer Park, including building a nursery stocked with over 100,000 plants intended for eventual use in other Seattle parks. He was also an early proponent of extending federal protection to Mount Rainier and its surrounding area, in order to save it from degradation due to overuse and vandalism. He said, "It is not foreign to the mission of the city’s park commission to be informed of some of the facts relative to the United States reservation created and designated as the 'Pacific Coast Park Reserve,'" and urged the park commission to petition the Secretary of Interior to take steps to protect