For our second installment in the Beaumont-Wilshire photo series, let’s take a look at a scene that will be simultaneously familiar and a bit exotic, at least to our modern eyes. There’s lots to look at here in this view to the west on Fremont from NE 42^nd, so let’s just stare at this for a minute (click on the picture twice to open up a larger view) and then come back here to analyze what we can see.

NE 42nd and Fremont, looking west, about 1929. Photo courtesy of Paul Kirkland.

The first thing that jumps out are the powerlines: high tension, high elevation, lots of them and probably lots of power thrumming through to feed the new homes in the Beaumont-Wilshire neighborhood. Note the lines taking off to the left and right while the main feed runs east-west along the north side of Fremont. Good thing we’ve restrung these over the years. Poles are still there in what looks like the same places, just not quite as toweringly tall.

Back to the picture, look left of center and you’ll see the familiar form of today’s Beaumont Middle School, then known simply as Beaumont School, a fully-contained K-8. Built in 1926 by Stebinger Brothers general contractors at a total cost of $225,000 from a design by Portland school architect George Jones, the school was both hearth and namesake for the neighborhood, hosting generations of local kids. Look beyond the school to the left (west) and you can see one of the portable units that functioned as the first Beaumont School starting in 1915, and then after 1926 was the venue for Beaumont’s shop and “manual training” classes. Look carefully and you can see there were actually a couple of buildings there. Alameda School was based out of portable units in the early years as well: something that we’ve written about here on the blog. Check out these stories here and here.

Our photo shows a 1928 Ford Model A Truck in the mid-ground, backed up to four businesses located where Pizzicato, Americana Frame and Silhouette are today on the north side of Fremont at NE 42^nd. These buildings were built in 1929 and are still standing today—with some significant modifications. The “Dutch Village” commercial block across the street on the southside, which houses today’s Beaumont Market, is not visible in this photo, but was built in 1929. More about that building and the commercial hustle and bustle of the neighborhood coming up in future posts.

The four businesses visible in this early photo are Beaumont Hardware (which has since moved east a block); Henry and Anna Witt’s Buy Rite Grocery; Fremont Dry Goods Company; and Beaumont Pharmacy (which later moved across the street to the southside where Gazelle is today, where it became a neighborhood fixture for its soda fountain among other things). Not visible in this picture but tucked into these spaces in the years that followed were John King, barber; Gustaf Pulos and Absolom Barnard Shoe Repair; and Charles E. Riggs, grocer.

Also visible is what looks like rough surfacing of Fremont. Looks like dirt or gravel to us in this picture. We know that paving was a premium in early Portland, but our research suggests this stretch of road had indeed been paved by then. The next several pictures will show some street and sidewalk work in front of these businesses—which may have been why the photos were taken in the first place—creating some paving and road surfacing needs.

Lastly, the arc and sweep of tire tracks in the lower left of this photo might suggest streetcar tracks to some. But just for clarity, that wasn’t the case. We’ll write about the Beaumont streetcar in a future post, but it didn’t pass through here: it came up Wisteria and NE 41^st, stopping in the vicinity of Klickitat Street. Stay tuned for more on that.

Time travel’s kind of neat, eh? Thanks Paul. Wondering what this intersection will look like 100 years from now…

Next: A look at construction underway in the Beaumont business district.