In 1913, nearby property owners and the Department of Public Works were concerned about the stability of the slope above Fremont Street in the stretch between NE 30th and NE 33rd. Fremont itself was perched along the north edge of a giant gravel pit that had been mined for decades and would eventually be filled with garbage to build it back up to grade.
NE Fremont Street looking east near today’s 32nd Place, in 1913. Click in for a closer look. Gravel pit to the right (south) and cutbank above to the left (north). House in the center is 3415 NE Fremont. In the distance, sewer pipe is stacked down the hill along the east side of 33rd and a person faces the photographer at the intersection. A wooden plank sidewalk runs along the south side of Fremont. The gravel and dirt streets were paved the following year. Photo courtesy of City Archives, A2009.009.3615.
The cutbank slope above Fremont angled up 50-75 feet to the southern edges of the brand-new Alameda Park and Olmsted Park subdivisions, which flattened out to the north atop Alameda Ridge. With nothing to hold the cutbank in place, dirt and gravel would periodically slide down, covering sidewalks and curbs and spilling out onto Fremont Street.
A Department of Public Works photographer was there to document the slope. These are the last three in the series we’ve been sharing of re-discovered images at City Archives that are labeled as “Lombard Street.”
Moving farther west on Fremont, the photographer noted two other slides that had covered sidewalks and curbs.
NE Fremont Street. Looking east just below the crest of Alameda Ridge, seen from between today’s NE 32nd and NE 31st. Photo courtesy of City Archives, A2009.009.3616.
Fremont Street running left and right, seen from the corner of NE 31st, which leads downhill at bottom right. Looking northeast toward the top of Alameda Ridge. Photo courtesy of City Archives, A2009.009.3618.
Be sure to take a look at this view as well, a low-elevation oblique photo from 1930 that shows the cutbank, the slope below Fremont (now filled with garbage and grown over with brush) and lots of other neat things to look at.
No big surprise both slopes were on the move. Geologists remind us Alameda Ridge is basically a giant gravel bar, deposited more than 15,000 years ago by the great Missoula floods that shaped our region. In the years after these photos were taken, vegetation returned to the cutbank slope and houses (and stairways) were built, increasing the surface stability.
Attentive reader and friend of Alameda Brian Rooney tracked down a great graphic that shows the east-west pendant gravel bar of Alameda Ridge that formed downstream (west) of Rocky Butte during the great floods. Helps visualize the old “Gravelly Hill” ridgeline. The arrow points out the intersection of 33rd and Fremont:
A detail from a comprehensive poster explaining the Missoula Floods by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. Thanks Brian!
Up Next – A bonus photo from Public Works: the Columbia Slough in 1913.
Two 112-year-old public stairways, known today for their role in fitness regimes as well as shortcuts to and from Alameda Elementary School, were once frontrunners of change in what had been rural northeast Portland.
The stairways were built in 1912 by Warren Construction Company, concrete flights anchored into the slope of the ridge, connecting the brand-new Olmsted Park subdivision above with early Fremont Street and what developers hoped would eventually be new neighborhoods below. When built they seemed precarious and tentative, hanging out on rugged cliff-like hillsides above Fremont Street, a giant gravel pit just below. See for yourself:
Fremont Street looking due north showing steps leading down from Alameda Terrace, 1913. House at left is 3251 NE Alameda Terrace. Today these steps land just west of NE 32nd Avenue. Directly behind the photographer was a gravel pit that stretched downslope to the south beyond today’s Klickitat Street and spanned from NE 33rd to NE 31st. Photo courtesy of City Archives: A2009.009.3621.
Fremont Street looking northeast showing steps leading down from Alameda Terrace, 1913. Today these steps land just east of NE 30th and Fremont. House at left is 3251 NE Alameda Terrace. Photo courtesy of City Archives: A2009.009.3635.
A photographer from the Department of Public Works visited the area in December 1913 and may have been following up on concerns from developers and new homeowners about the stability of the slope above and below Fremont in the stretch between NE 30th and NE 33rd. The glass plate negatives he brought back have been at rest since, identified as “Lombard Street” at City Archives. The newly re-discovered stairway images join photos of the giant gravel pit at NE 33rd and Fremont, and photos of the actual intersection in its early development days that we’ve been sharing here, with a few more to come.
The house pictured in both photos still stands today. In 1912, it was one of just a few homes on what was then known as Woodworth Avenue, but is today known as Alameda Terrace, built that same year by Samuel J. and Dorrie Mae Claridge. Over the years, other adjacent houses were built, steadying the slope and giving the stairs purpose connecting neighbors with their neighborhood.
Despite a deep search of early newspapers, city contracting documents and city ordinances, little remains to tell the story of their early construction. When built in 1912, most Portlanders relied on walking and streetcars to get around, and horses to move freight. A dispersed system of public stairways just made sense, particularly up and down landscapes like Gravelly Hill (today’s Alameda Ridge).
The 30th Avenue stairs were noted in the May 1981 citywide Historic Resource Inventory, called out for their significance related to landscape architecture and their role in development of the neighborhood. In the inventory, they’re labeled as “Olmsted Park Public Right of Way.”
Today, these stairs, along with others that span the ridge as it transits northeast Portland, appear in many city exploration guides, including a notable book written by Laura O. Foster called appropriately Portland Stair Walks.
We recommend them as part of your regular history walk regime!
To really understand the next installment of photos from the 1913 collection, it helps to visualize what the middle part of Portland’s eastside looked like then, and what was going on in the economy and life of the city. Following the Lewis and Clark Exposition, which put Portland on the map in so many ways, our population exploded: from 90,426 people in the 1900 census, to 207,214 by 1910.
Like shock waves rippling out across what had been a mostly agricultural landscape, development pressures began to reshape the dirt roads, orchards, dairies and forested clumps of the middle eastside. Meanwhile the economy began to heat up in the early teens as speculators, home buyers and homebuilders jockeyed to take advantage of the growing marketplace. Maps and a few precious photos from the early 1900s show this place as mostly undeveloped open lands, dotted with barns, scattered farm houses and dirt roads.
By 1913, the fields and hills of the middle eastside had been platted out into subdivisions, and the infrastructure of sewer, water, electricity and roads was trying to catch up with the vision sold by developers. In some places, a grid of streets existed, and a sprinkling of single family homes was being built, making visible the conversion from agriculture to residential use. To the north closer to Alberta, construction had been underway since the middle of the 00’s. Eastside neighborhoods closer to the river–Albina, Irvington, Ladd’s Addition, Woodlawn, the Peninsula–had been platted and growing as early as the 1890s.
Back in the day, the intersection of NE 33rd and Fremont–the focal point of this 11-photo series of glass plate negatives from City Archives–was a north-south wagon road to the Columbia River, and access point for the giant gravel pit near the top of the ridge. Surrounded on all sides by planned development, the intersection was in transition from dirt path to thoroughfare.
On the northeast side of the intersection, the Jacobs-Stine Company was ready to sell you a lot in the Manitou Subdivision. Just across Fremont to the southeast, the Terry & Harris Company wanted you to see the lots in Maplehurst. Our photographer from the Department of Public Works captured both views. Meanwhile, the mud puddle in the middle of the intersection reminded everyone the reality that for the moment, this was still a fairly rural place.
Looking to the northeast along Fremont from the southwest corner of NE 33rd and Fremont (33rd is passing from upper left to lower right). The house in the distance at right is today’s 3415 NE Fremont (built in 1912). Curbs and sidewalks are in (thanks to Elwood Wiles and Warren Construction), and ceramic sewer pipe is stacked near the curb awaiting installation. The Jacobs-Stine Company, boasting on its sign of being “The largest realty operators on the Pacific Coast,” was owned in part by Fred Jacobs, who would later die when his car tumbled off Stuart Drive in Alameda a few blocks from here, giving rise to the nick-name of that street as Deadman’s Hill. Photo courtesy of City Archives, image A2009.009.3613.
Looking to the southeast from the northwest corner of 33rd and Fremont. 33rd runs down the hill on the right. Fremont follows the slight rise to the left as it heads east. Sewer construction is evidently about to begin. Photo courtesy of City Archives, image A2009.009.3614.
Left photo is similar to top, looking northeast. Right photo is similar to bottom, looking southeast.
Maplehurst was platted in 1910 by Mary Beakey, who named a street for her family (labeled as A Street on the plat). It’s a relatively small subdivision–only three blocks and 43 lots, and exists up against a plat called Irene Heights, which was developed by the Barnes family, containing the Barnes mansion and multiple former Barnes family homes.
NE 33rd wasn’t the only north-south thoroughfare passing through a landscape in transition. One half section to the east (our landscape was gridded into sections, townships and ranges by surveyors in the 1850s), NE 42nd Avenue was experiencing its own growing pains.
Up next: The Alameda stairs. Our Department of Public Works photographer captured the brand-new stairways transiting the slope between Fremont and Alameda Terrace (known as Woodworth before the Great Renumbering of the early 1930s).
Every now and then in my research, I’ll find something—a memory, photograph, map or document—that really sticks with me and defines the way I think about a place.
This month I found a batch of mis-identified photographs when searching at City of Portland Archives that resulted in an absolute jackpot from 1913, opening a fresh window into the past near NE 33rd and Fremont.
Once known as Gravelly Hill, the area was indeed a gravel pit for many years in the late 1800s, and later the repository for all of the eastside’s household garbage between 1923-1924, then known as the Fremont Sanitary Landfill.
But before the landfill, back in 1910 as subdivisions crowded in around the big pit, questions were raised about the basic stability of Fremont Street, which was just below the brow of the Alameda ridge and ran right along the north edge of the pit. Developer Benjamin Lombard, who platted the adjacent Olmsted Park about that time, even sued the city for violating its own ordinance about gravel pits.
So, no secret: that slope South of Fremont was a gravel pit.
But as it turns out, it wasn’t just a gravel pit. It was a GIANT gravel pit. See for yourself:
You’ll want to click into this for a good look. Looking east along Fremont toward NE 33rd from about today’s NE 32nd Avenue. Sewer pipe stacked along the eastern edge of NE 33rd, which slopes downhill left to right. The roof of the house visible at treeline in the center is the Barnes Mansion, 3533 NE Klickitat, which was then brand new. City Archives Photo: A2009.009-3611 (mislabeled as Lombard Street)
In 1913, a photographer for the Department of Public Works visited the pit and brought back 11 amazing images that got buried in the archives. They’re large-format glass plate negatives, not prints, and for years have been filed away in envelopes under “Lombard Street” at City Archives. I suspect few people have ever seen them. A few weeks back, something else I was looking for led me to these glass negatives.
I photographed each plate and made positive prints to be able to better visualize the scenes. And as I studied that first picture and figured out it wasn’t showing Lombard Street, but Fremont Street, I knew this would be a find to remember.
After that first photo, there were these next two, clearly taken as a pair, to illustrate the depth and breadth of the pit. Both are unquestionably tied to the Gravelly Hill landscape. Here I’ve melded them together to create a single image:
Looking north into the gravel pit at NE 33rd and Fremont, December 1913. Click to enlarge. View would be from between today’s Siskiyou and Klickitat streets, looking uphill. The house at far left is today’s 3251 NE Alameda Terrace. The house at far right is the top of today’s 3305 NE Alameda. A sign is visible at upper right for a new subdivision, placed in the cutbank on the northeast corner of 33rd and Fremont. Segments of sewer pipe are visible stacked there. Today, the pit is filled with three city blocks and more than 50 homes. City archives photos, left: A2009.009.3619; right: A2009.009.3620.
Here’s a bit more context from neighborhood historian R.A. Paulson, writing in The Community Press on October 1, 1975:
“From the earliest recollections of those familiar with the area, this was a worked out gravel pit, the excavation of which had been finished many years before but still showing the signs of one-time activity. As late as 1919 and 1920, the pit formed a precipice going down sharply from near Fremont possibly 100 feet or so to the level of Klickitat and extending between 32nd place and 33rd Ave. Coming from the west, Kllickitat Street was unpaved east of about 29th with the cement sidewalks ending there but even between 26th and 29th these sidewalks were impassable because of the overgrown bushes and small trees.
“The gravel pit had been a lush source of rock and gravel for someone way back and the solid bank of this material had originally sloped down from Fremont at the same grade as the present 33rd Ave. This had been scooped out over a period of perhaps 50 years or more and most likely went into improving the lanes, roadways and public highways for miles around, certainly for the country roads that became 33rd Ave. and Fremont Street.
“The bed of the pit showed evidence that work and even habitation had gone on there but at the time of World War 1, only a monolith of stone, too difficult to remove with pick and shovel, reared upward from the new level.”
Here’s a detail from a 1925 aerial photo that shows the extent of the pit and the still-forming street infrastructure. The pit covered two-plus blocks, from NE 33rd to NE 31st, between Fremont and Klickitat.
Detail from a 1925 aerial photo showing the intersection of Fremont and 33rd, labels added for reference. Dashed lines indicate eventual location of NE 32nd Place and NE 32nd Avenue. Click to enlarge. Aerial photo courtesy of City of Portland Archives.
Stay tuned for eight other gems in this collection that are just as knock-your-socks-off amazing as these three. Next up: we’ll take a close look at the intersection of NE 33rd and Fremont 111 years ago, absolutely recognizable to today’s eye.
Last weekend marked the final public tour of the A.L. Mills Open Air School at the southwest corner of SE 60th and Stark in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood.
The empty long hallway at Open Air School, December 2024. The building has been empty since 2019.
The former school building, built in 1918-1919, will soon be deconstructed by the Portland Housing Bureau (PHB) to make way for an affordable housing development. For the last six weeks, we’ve been working with the Bureau and the Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association to share stories of the building with neighbors and anyone interested in having a last look.
Some came because they’ve watched the old school’s recent decline, seen the graffiti and cyclone fence sprout and wondered what was inside. Others came because they’ve had connections to one of the four chapters of its earlier life. Everyone wanted to know what would come next.
A.L. Mills Open Air School first of its kind
When it opened in 1919, the Abbott L. Mills Open Air School put Portland on the map nationally and internationally as the nation’s first entirely purpose-built open-air school, meaning that students and teachers spent their entire school day surrounded by fresh air. A handful of other communities across the country had experimented with a classroom here or there in an existing school. In Portland, the original Irvington School featured one open air classroom where the windows were open all day, all school year.
But with financial help and encouragement from the Oregon Tuberculosis Association, Portland Public Schools was able to build an entire school dedicated to helping “low vitality children” improve their health and therefore their resiliency to tuberculosis, which was a serious health threat of that era killing hundreds of thousands of people of all ages in the U.S. during the 1920s.
From the Oregon Journal, November 30, 1919
The Oregon Tuberculosis Association was led by Abbot L. Mills, former Oregon Speaker of the House, philanthropist, president of the First National Bank of Portland, and chief organizer of the Portland Open Air Sanatorium for Consumptives. Mills, who earlier served as vice president of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, was a tireless public health advocate around tuberculosis, and the chief push on funding for the school, so it’s entirely appropriate the building bears his name.
The open-air movement was an international public health philosophy based on the notion that being exposed to fresh, circulating air kept children, and people of all ages, healthier.
60th and Stark: Epicenter of Mt. Tabor community and Portland’s health spas
That’s why school and health officials selected the western slopes of Mt. Tabor, then a rural and bucolic elevated place distant from the churn of downtown Portland (Mt. Tabor was annexed into Portland in 1905). In 1902, the Portland Sanitarium opened just a block away at 60th and Belmont (site of the former Adventist Hospital). Another private sanitarium operated at 60th and Yamhill.
60th and Stark was also the crossroads and heart of the Mt. Tabor community. From 1880 until 1911 a former school operated on the site. Before that, a frontier school operated out of a log building in the same place.
Looking south on 60th at the corner with Stark (then known as Baseline Road), about 1907, four years before this school burned, clearing the site that has hosted the Open Air School since 1918. Drying cordwood is stacked for the furnace in the old school. Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society, image Org-Lot-982, Box 8 Folder 6.
The two-room A.L. Mills Open Air School opened on January 27, 1919 with its full capacity of 50 students ages 5-15, two teachers and care team.
The Stark Street side of Open Air. Photograph Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society, from the Ben Gifford Collection Box 8, Folder 5.Gifford photographed the school not long after its opening on January 27, 1919.
Miss Anna Thompson was principal of “Open Air,” its often-used nickname, and she never missed an opportunity to let everyone know her students were not tuberculous: they were children with health infirmities that made them vulnerable to TB.
Here’s an essay by Principal Thompson that appeared in The Oregonian on May 14, 1925:
“Because of the ardent interest and material support given by the Oregon Tuberculosis Association in the early history of the school, many people believe ‘Open Air’ to be a school for tuberculous children. This is a very grave mistake. Children who are tuberculous or infections from any cause whatsoever are not admitted. I want this fact impressed on parents and others. We are trying to prevent these children from growing into defective conditions–the purpose is preventative not remedial.“
Got that? Not a place for sick children: Miss Thompson and her colleagues were trying to keep them from getting sick.
Afternoon nap time at Open Air. Photograph Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society, from the Ben Gifford Collection Box 8, Folder 5.
Staff at Open Air included Principal Thompson, who also taught in one of the two rooms; a physician who was on site every Wednesday to examine each child; a full-time nurse; a matron who helped with showers, hygiene and meals; and a second teacher. The nurse visited each student’s home multiple times to make a plan with parents about how to work together and to keep tabs on progress.
There were places for 50 students, drawn from all walks of life across the city. Their families applied and the children had to be examined by the doctor and nurse to be admitted, and to stay enrolled. Students could stay up to three terms to rebuild their weight and improve their health before going back to their neighborhood schools, so the composition of the student body shifted each term.
From The Oregonian, February 10, 1931.
In the 1920 school year, 77 total students were in attendance, which means 27 of them were “restored to health” and transferred back to their neighborhood schools, allowing other children to be admitted. The Oregonian in 1920 reported that at one point 15 of the 50 children were “only children,” who theoretically had the undivided attention of their parents–no siblings–a point that Principal Thompson liked to make, perhaps to bolster the fact that unhealthiness was not necessarily related to a lack of resources or attention.
A great description of a day in the life of Open Air ran in The Oregonian on December 10, 1922:
“Shower baths are the first order of the day at 8:00 and during this period once a week the pupils are weighed and inspected for symptoms of physical defects. After baths the pupils put on their sitting robes of heavy blanket material and enter the open window classrooms where they attend their studies until 10:25 at which time half a pint of milk is served in the lunch room to each pupil. This is followed by a period of supervised recreation. When the weather permits games are played on the court or lawn.
“The entire noon hour is given up in preparation for lunch, eating lunch, and preparation for rest. Getting ready for lunch requires washing face and hands, cleaning fingernails, combing hair.
“A copy of the menu of hot dishes for the following week’s lunches is sent home each Friday, so that the mothers will know how to supplement them with the right kind of sandwiches and other foods. For the past week, the menu has been: Monday, hot milk toast; Tuesday, apple tapioca; Wednesday, lamb stew with vegetables; Thursday, hot cocoa; Friday, hot rice”
“After the midday meal, the teeth are brushed and pupils returned to classroom where preparation for rest is made. Cots are spread with warm blankets and after a few vigorous breathing exercises, the rest period begins. At 2:00, the children rise from the cots, faces are washed and hair is combed and studies are resumed until 3:25 when milk is again served and the pupils are dismissed.“
From The Oregonian, December 10, 1922
In cold weather, the children wore heavy robes (pictured above) which were called “Eskimaux suits,” described like this in that same story:
“The brownie coveralls with hood provided by the school to be worn on chilly days are like a fraternity emblem among the pupils and are decidedly popular as their insignia of privileged rank. Sleeping robes are also provided, made of canvas lined with gray woolen blankets that launder well.“
An observation of impact and results were noted in this story from The Oregonian on April 20, 1919, just a few months after the school opened:
From The Oregonian, April 20, 1919
Repurposed to meet current needs
By the late 1940s, the baby boom of Portland’s school-age children brought neighborhood schools to full capacity. With tuberculosis receding as a health threat and the need to make more space, the school board chose to close Open Air, sending students back to their neighborhood schools, and reconfiguring the building as Mt. Tabor Annex, the venue for all kindergarten and first-grade children from Mt. Tabor. A third classroom was built and the converted annex operated as a regular school until 1973.
When the population of school-age children receded, the building was surplussed, ending up in the portfolio of Portland Parks and Recreation, where it was once again repurposed, operating from 1974-1990 as the Mt. Tabor Community Arts Program and Community Theater Workshop.
Budget cuts in the 1990s ended the community arts and theater programs and the building was fallow for several years and on track to be sold to a private school operator, which ended up not happening. In 1994, Parks and Recreation leased the building to the YMCA, which operated it as a daycare for 25 years, until 2019. Operating costs and deferred maintenance ended that chapter just as the pandemic descended, and the old school was once again surplussed, eventually acquired by the Portland Housing Bureau. It’s been vacant since as the Housing Bureau has considered its options.
What’s Next
On each of the recent tours, PHB Capital Projects Manager Kate Piper explained to neighbors that the bureau will soon be deconstructing the old school and salvaging as much of the building material as possible. Redevelopment plans are not yet clear on what happens after that, or when, but removing the existing building from the site is a high priority to manage liability and to set the stage for future development.
This fall’s public tours of the building have helped resurrect and appreciate the stories of Open Air’s past. This time traveler will be going away, but the site has always been a place of change and evolution, meeting the community’s most pressing needs.
No one on the tours questioned the importance of housing, though most couldn’t help but be moved by the stories that have played out there: of Principal Anna Thompson and her team, the children—each on their own pathway to vitality—and the will of a community investing hope and energy in its most vulnerable.
With thanks to colleagues Paul Leistner, President of the Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association; Kristen Minor, Architectural Historian who completed a detailed survey of the property; and Kate Piper at PHB for recognizing the importance of sharing the Open Air story and connecting with the neighborhood.
Neighbors interested in adaptive reuse of old buildings have had a front row seat this summer and fall as the von Homeyer house at NE 24th and Mason has been brought back from the brink of being a candidate for tear-down. Today, it’s on the cusp of its new life, with all of its systems transformed, spaces rearranged and upgraded, and virtually every interior and exterior surface either new or restored.
It’s as if the house is brand new: every window (the old ones were salvaged), all the doors, roof, heating (and now air conditioning), electrical, plumbing, floors, all wall surfaces, fireplace (the original mantel and built-in bookshelves are still there). Repaired and waterproofed foundation, new sanitary sewer line, fiber optics. Everything about the kitchen. It’s been a busy place.
NE 24th and Mason, photographed in December 2024. Note repaired front porch columns at far right.
But still, when you see the “then” picture from 1925 when the house was built, and a recent photo from this December, it’s definitely the same time traveler, just transformed for its next 100 years.
AH readers will recall that neighbors Jaylen and Michael Schmitt bought the house earlier this year after the youngest son of the von Homeyer family, now in his 90s, moved to a care facility. The house had been in the same family for almost 100 years, and the brothers lived there their entire lives.
The Schmitts, like many in the neighborhood, were concerned the house would eventually be a tear-down and that something else built there could be an eyesore or worse. When they bought it, the house was jammed to the ceilings with boxes, papers and an incredible collection of items from several lifetimes. They reached out to us for help sorting through a trove of documents and curating some of the items. We re-homed 30 pounds of precious photos to far-flung family.
Four months of thinning and organizing led to a well-attended estate sale in May and gradually as the house was emptied, the Schmitts worked with architect Mary Hogue of MkM Architecture to plan for adapting the house.
On the first floor, the existing bedroom and bathroom remain (all the plaster throughout the house has been replaced with drywall). The kitchen has been enlarged and will feature an island, two sinks and all the latest appliances. A newly re-opened and restored front porch is accessed by new french doors leading from the living room.
Looking into the living room / dining room. New French doors lead out onto the newly restored front porch. Framing is in, at left, for the fireplace.
The large kitchen features two sinks, will have a central island with cabinets, wall-hung cabinets all around, and a door out into the large backyard.
Upstairs, there are now two full bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and a giant walk-in closet and dressing area with a huge bank of windows, and a combo washing machine/dryer.
This bedroom upstairs features lots of light and a large closet.
Upstairs, the primary bedroom features large windows and a giant walk-in closet to the left. An en suite bathroom is to the right.
The walk-in closet off the primary bedroom is filled with light.
In the basement: another bedroom and bathroom; a giant family room and entertainment area wired for surround-sound; and a utility room with washer/dryer and sink.
Michael Schmitt, who lives nearby, has been on site almost every single day. Michael is using a builder and subs to do most of the work, and calls himself a “heavily involved owner.” He says he’s become a very good “cleaner-upper.”
“I want to make sure this house is put together as expertly as possible,” Michael explains. So, he has had a parade of tradespeople helping: framers, plumbers, electricians, stucco experts, drywallers, HVAC experts.
It’s been stressful. Michael reckons he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep this year between worrying about what might be the next surprise, and trying to figure out the puzzle of transforming almost every aspect of the house.
“If I were to offer my earlier self some advice based on this year, I’d have to say ‘you’ve got to be 100 percent crazy to do this.’”
While it has been stressful, it’s also been rewarding in so many ways. First, the Schmitts saved the house and property from what surely would have been a much larger building (or buildings). That alone makes it worth all the work. But Michael has enjoyed working with a great team of experienced tradespeople, getting to know his neighbors better and saying hello to the daily stream of passersby, many of whom offer thanks and encouragement.
This week, work on the house is at about the 60-70 percent level. Last week was drywall installation and mudding. Yet to come: painting, trim and finish carpentry, plumbing fixtures, floors, kitchen cabinets (and everything about the kitchen). So many details. And then there is the landscaping, driveway, fencing. Still plenty of work to do.
Michael is hoping the house will be ready to put on the market in the spring. When that time comes, he’ll be ready to cross the finish line and welcome new neighbors. “This will end up being a year and half of my life,” he muses when reflecting on all the stages of the work so far. And while it’s been a journey of ups and downs, all the learning, progress, transformations and new friendships have helped make it worthwhile.
This month we’ve been working with the Portland Housing Bureau and the Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association to research and to share the remarkable story of the A.L. Mills Open Air School located at the southwest corner of SE 60th and Stark.
SE 60th elevation of the A.L. Mills Open Air School, built for “low vitality” children in 1919. Photograph Courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society, from the Ben Gifford Collection Box 8, Folder 5.
You’ve driven by this little jog in 60th and maybe looked at the 106-year-old building—now surrounded by cyclone fencing—and wondered about its history. Empty now since 2019 and owned by the Portland Housing Bureau, the building will soon be deconstructed and the site repurposed for affordable housing.
In the meantime before the building is gone, both the Housing Bureau and the Mt. Tabor Neighborhood Association wanted to collect and share stories about the role the old school has played in neighborhood life, and to offer neighbors a chance to come take one last look. They reached out to us for help, which has allowed our customary deep dive for stories and insights that bring the building to life, at least in our imaginations.
The east classroom at the A.L. Mills Open Air School in the early 1920s and today. Early photo courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society, from the Ben Gifford Collection Box 8, File 5.Current photo by author.
These last three weekends, we’ve led tours to share these stories, which will culminate in a final open house and tour on Saturday morning, December 7th from 10:00-Noon. Here’s a link to more information.
Later in December here on the blog, we’ll devote a full post to the stories and photos we’ve uncovered about the school and the site, but for now a short summary would go like this:
Built in 1918-1919 as Oregon’s only school entirely devoted to being “open air” throughout the school year, which was thought to be healthful during the rise of tuberculosis and other diseases. Children studied, played, ate and napped in the open-air classrooms, which were defined by their large banks of windows. The students were issued special warm clothing and monitored closely by a school nurse who also coordinated one-on-one with families on menu planning and other behaviors to help children return to vitality.
In 1949, after 30 years as an open-air school, the building was repurposed as an annex to the burgeoning nearby Mt. Tabor School. An additional classroom was built and until the early 1970s, the site hosted baby boomer kindergarten and first grade students who went on to Mt. Tabor School.
After the school function ended in 1973, the building was repurposed again as the home of a community arts and theater program run by Portland Parks and Recreation. Budget cuts in the early 1990s ended those programs and the property was on track to be sold to a private owner before being repurposed again and leased by Portland Parks to the YMCA which operated it as a daycare until 2019.
Portland Parks surplused the property in 2016 to the Portland Housing Bureau. The YMCA daycare operation ended in 2019 and the building has been vacant since then. Today, the Housing Bureau is readying the site for redevelopment as affordable housing.
Just to add a little more depth, before the Open Air School, the site hosted an imposing two-story bell-towered wood-frame elementary school between 1880-1911 but it burned in January 1911. Before that the site hosted the area’s first school, conducted in a frontier log structure. Plus, that corner of SE 60th and Stark was the center of the vibrant Mt. Tabor community before being annexed into Portland in 1905.
The former 101-year-old Hinrich’s Grocery building, at the northeast corner of NE 30th and Ainsworth, has been demolished recently to make way for a 14-unit townhouse on the lot.
We came upon the change while walking, and were reminded of photos we’ve taken at the corner before, and a photo from 1944 that shows the building and the north terminus of the Alberta Streetcar.
We’ve written about this corner before, which was dubbed “the finest corner in Concordia” back in 1915, following a summer evening’s soiree of dance, music and trees sparkling with electric lights.
The 1944 photo shows a corner entry and what looks like French doors that open out onto Ainsworth. We’ve been in the neighborhood since the late 1980s and that south wall of French doors during our time has always been covered over with siding.
Over the years, the building has housed many businesses, including the Mauser-Lamont Insurance Agency, Town Mart Cleaners, Emerson’s Grocery (1930s), and Hinrich’s Grocery (1920s).
Development permits on file suggest the now-vacant lot will be developed as a new 14-unit townhouse in two buildings with no garage.
We had been focused on the work of John W. McFadden, a homebuilder operating in the Laurelhurst neighborhood of the 19-teens and 1920s, when we bumped into an interesting thread of newspaper stories related to the big traffic roundabout known today as Coe Circle, at the intersection of NE Cesar Chavez Boulevard and NE Glisan. The circle exists at the core of the 392-acre Laurelhurst subdivision, platted in 1909, which before the turn of the last century had been prime agricultural land known as Hazel Fern Farm.
You know this place, which features the gold-leaf statue of Joan of Arc given to the City of Portland in 1925 by Portland resident Dr. Henry Waldo Coe, Oregon State Senator, personal friend of Teddy Roosevelt and advocate for WW1 soldiers. Coe chose this statute because Joan of Arc, by way of a song (Joan of Arc, They Are Calling you), spurred the courage and devotion of soldiers singing and fighting in France in 1917-1918. But that’s another story. Plus, the statue didn’t come along until Memorial Day 1925, 16 years after the circle was first platted.
Coe Circle / “Block A” and the location of the Laurelhurst Company Tract Office, from “Laurelhurst & Its Park,” published in 1912.
The 80’ radius circle in the middle of the intersection had a few incarnations before it became the roundabout we know today, and in 1923 it narrowly avoided being turned into a retail hub, launching a dispute that shook the neighborhood. Add the traffic circle—today officially a city park—to the long list of places that nearly turned out very differently, including several of our favorite Northeast Portland parks which barely missed becoming subdivisions.
Up until the early 1920s, the Laurelhurst Company operated a real estate sales office on the north side of the circle, which was then divided north-south by the Montavilla Streetcar that traveled east-west on Glisan between Montavilla and downtown. A streetcar stop / real estate office was the perfect combination. During those years, most Portlanders traveled by streetcar, which was the ideal way to access the new eastside subdivisions to peruse vacant lots and dream about building a new house.
But by 1921, surrounding neighborhood lots had been bought up and it seemed to at least one builder/developer that what Laurelhurst needed more than a real estate office at that location was a place to buy groceries.
The Laurelhurst Company closed the real estate office in November 1921 and auctioned off the property, often referred to as “Block A,” to the highest bidder: builder/developer J.W. McFadden who knew the neighborhood well from building dozens of homes there.
By Christmas 1921, McFadden’s plans to build a combined grocery, meat market and drug store on the south side of the circle with second-story apartments above, plus a filling station on the north side of the circle, ignited a battle in the neighborhood between those who liked the idea, and those who felt it compromised the residential feel of the place. McFadden hired talented local architect Ellis Lawrence, co-founder of the University of Oregon School of Architecture, to produce designs that would make the market a “handsome structure.”
Rendering of J.W. McFadden’s planned commercial hub to be located on the south side of today’s Coe Circle at NE Cesar Chavez and Glisan. From The Oregonian, December 25, 1921. The building was designed by Ellis Lawrence.
At issue was the interpretation of prohibitions on commercial buildings. Laurelhurst, like many eastside neighborhoods had racial deed restrictions and prohibitions against commercial buildings. But Block A seemed to be exempt.
From The Oregonian, December 25, 1921
A “riot” might be a bit of an overstatement, but things did get heated, with adjacent homeowners who were attorneys filing an injunction against McFadden’s plans. Even Olaf Laurgaard, Portland’s City Engineer who lived in Laurelhurst on Royal Court, came out against the proposal and suggested a fix.
The case moved through Multnomah County Circuit Court in early 1922 and eventually the opponents lost: McFadden won the case that the commercial prohibitions did not apply to Block A. After all, the Laurelhurst Company had operated its commercial real estate office there for at least a dozen years.
From The Oregonian, March 5, 1922
The day after the circuit court decision, attorney-homeowners petitioned Portland City Council to seek other means by eliminating the circle altogether and turning it into a city street thus scuttling McFadden’s development plans. City Engineer Laurgaard’s fingerprints begin to show in this approach. Must have been a fine line to walk both as concerned neighbor and city official in charge of street engineering.
The case percolated through city politics that spring and summer, but by August 1922, Laurgaard and development opponents had figured out a course of action that involved the city buying out McFadden’s interest using mostly one-time special assessment funds paid by Laurelhurst residents and a token amount paid by the streetcar company. In August, City Council passed an ordinance codifying the “compromise.” McFadden dropped his plans, Laurelhurst neighbors paid their one-time special assessment to buy Block A, and the city added its latest city park.
From The Oregonian, August 24, 1922.
The Joan of Arc statue came along in 1925. Next time you pass by, note that it’s not in the middle of the circle, but slightly to the south because at the time, the streetcar still passed directly through the middle as it traveled along Glisan Street. As you make the round, tip your hat to City Engineer Laurgaard and the neighbors who pushed for the park, and the early generation of Laurelhurst residents who paid their special assessment to make it happen.
For the record, builder John Wesley McFadden went on to become one of Portland’s more prolific and respected residential builders in Laurelhurst, Alameda and other northeast neighborhoods. During Portland’s building boom period of the 1920s, in addition to high-profile homes, apartment buildings and movie theaters, the J.W. McFadden Company built dozens of middle market and entry level bungalows on Portland’s eastside, mostly using designs and blueprints produced by the Universal Plans Service.
In 1931, McFadden built “Bobbie’s Castle,” a scaled-down bungalow memorial to the famous Silverton-area collie dog that walked 2,800 miles from Indiana back to its owners in Oregon. Bobbie was buried at the Oregon Humane Society in Northeast Portland, and McFadden’s memorial to him—a small house—was located at the dog’s grave there.
In 1937—at age 56—McFadden joined with financial backers to create Modern Builders, Inc. to build multiple apartment buildings in southeast and southwest Portland. He died in Portland at age 68 on February 3, 1950.
Next Saturday morning, September 21st, we’ll be at the Architectural Heritage Center in Portland to present a new program called The Builders. Illustrated with photos, newspaper clippings, maps, interviews and stories–and drawing on our growing collection of builder biographies–we’ll share a sense of the people and the process of building, marketing and buying the houses that are now entering their second century. Tickets are still available, register online or contact AHC for more information.
Builders working on an eastside bungalow in the early 1900s. Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society, Negative 37092.
Alameda Old House History 
