Author Archives: Doug

Folkenberg: West Hills Ghost Plat

June 1, 2023 By in Research, The Plats Tags: 1 Comment

Plats are the puzzle pieces of our urban geography: invisible grids tied to a much larger grid known as the Willamette Meridian; part engineering plan, part map, part marketing pitch. Developers were required to submit them to the Multnomah County Surveyor’s Office before they divvied up the landscape. Today more than 900 individual plats make up the City of Portland. Knowing this provides a passport into the city’s development history.

But sometimes, the ones that don’t get developed are as interesting as those that do.

A recent research assignment took us up Cornelius Pass Road into the northwest reaches of Portland’s west hills, high above Sauvie Island in pursuit of the story of Folkenberg School, a 1913 Craftsman-style one-room building that operated for 23 years until the Great Depression and school consolidation forced its closure.

Folkenberg School in May 2024, courtesy Alan Baylis, RE/MAX Advantage Group, and REPIXS.

Leaning on our research, Portland Monthly just wrote a nice piece about the old school, which was converted to a residence in the early 1970s and recently placed on the market.

The simple school—built without indoor plumbing, heated by woodstove and lighted by tall windows that flanked the single large room—existed at the center of the Folkenberg Addition, a 51-block planned community that its developers dreamed would one day be an extension of Portland.

Portland experienced a land rush in the years after the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, which attracted 1.5 million visitors, many of whom liked what they saw and wanted to stay. Much of Portland’s eastside was developed during this time, with new neighborhoods being platted every month, carved out of agricultural and forest lands. Real estate speculators made fortunes as lots were measured out, entire neighborhoods established and homes built.

That same housing boom fueled interest in other undeveloped lands within striking distance of downtown. When he filed his plat for the Folkenberg Addition in January 1911, realtor and land speculator R.W. Hefferlin was probably thinking about the newly built Heights neighborhoods of Portland’s westside—Willamette Heights, King’s Heights, Arlington Heights, and Hillside. Still, he recognized the reality of the surrounding rural landscape and in fact promoted the revenue generating aspects of chickens, fruit trees and nearby fields.

Folkenberg Plat, 1911. Click to enlarge. Red box indicates location of Folkenberg School. Cornelius Pass Road is at far left. The wide arc sweeping through north-south is the United Railways line. Nearby were other plats with similar ambitious planned developments.

In February 1911, United Railways completed a 4,103-foot railroad tunnel through the hillside, making a graceful arc right through the heart of Folkenberg and connecting the Tualatin Valley with Portland. Hefferlin made sure there was a rail passenger platform built in Folkenberg, and even named one of the improbable roads Depot Street to make sure everyone knew about the rail link. Remember, in the time before widespread use of automobiles, connecting subdivisions to Portland by rail was the number one factor ensuring property sales.

The namesake Folkenbergs were a Norwegian immigrant family who worked 300 acres in this area and ran a small sawmill. Patriarch Louis Folkenberg died unexpectedly in 1892 at age 54 leaving wife Inger Maria and 10 children, ranging in age from three to 24. By 1911, with children fledging and needs changing, the family sold off 107 acres for $14,455 to developer Hefferlin, who divided it up and began selling lots.

From The Oregonian, January 25, 1911. The home Hefferlin advertised as giving away free was the 1880s farmhouse built by Louis and Inger Maria Folkenberg.

When he platted Folkenberg, Hefferlin was already in the process of platting and marketing other nearby subdivisions known as Bayne Suburban Farms and Thompson Gardens, which were joined by other adjacent planned subdivisions called Sheltered Nook, Ingleview, Greenoe Heights, Cornelius Park, and Plain View Acres.

In 1913, the arrival of a few new families, and hopes for many more—plus the presence of many young Folkenbergs—eventually led to the call for a school to serve the area. Previously, children from this area traveled down the hill by foot or horse and wagon to Holbrook, Burlington or Linnton for schooling.

At its peak in 1916, the school had 33 students. But by the early 1920s, it was becoming clear J.W. Hefferlin’s suburban vision for Folkenberg was not going to pan out. Property sales slowed and then stopped. United Rail Lines focused on freight, not passengers. The area, as it turned out, was not within easy striking distance of downtown and in fact the people who wanted to live here were not particularly interested in things related to city life.

In the late 19-teens, Hefferlin stopped paying property taxes on the remaining lots he was trying to sell. Then in the summer of 1923, he gave up all together and moved to Los Angeles.

Through the late 1920s and into the Great Depression of the early 1930s, school enrollment slumped. In 1936, with enrollment down to just six students, parents in the area voted to close the school, sending the remaining kids to Holbrook School down the hill on Highway 30.

Folkenberg and its neighbor plats, conceived at a time of optimistic growth, remained the mostly rural lands they are today. The plats became ghosts, just lines on a map. The tax lots are still there, rolled together now into larger holdings. But Hefferlin’s idea of the next-big-thing westside neighborhood fled with him to Los Angeles, leaving behind a deserted old school tucked into a hilly rural landscape that faced years of hard use and deferred maintenance until new owners came along in the early 2000s to bring it back to life.

Want more on plats? We have an entire category!

Bundy’s: Another Puzzle Piece

April 7, 2023 By in Willamette River Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

We’ve come across another clue that helps us visualize the area on the east bank of the Willamette River opposite the northern end of Ross Island, home to the most popular swimming hole in early Portland. This spring we’ve been writing and thinking about Bundy’s Baths, which we discovered following a thread of interest spun by an album we received of 100-year-old photos of canoeing the Willamette in downtown Portland.

From the 1890s until the mid 19-teens, Bundy’s was an important eastside portal to the river, regularly hosting more than 1,000 swimmers on a hot summer day. Changing facilities, a snack bar, diving platforms, docks to hang out with friends and an enclosed swimming area made up the “bath house” and were afloat along the bank, anchored to piers that held them in place.

Here’s a detail from the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company map of this area from 1901. In these early days, Sanborn mapped 12,000 U.S. communities to help fire insurance underwriters evaluate risk by showing the location and type of structures, water mains and hydrants that were present. Today, we love them because they are a snapshot in time and allow us to visualize places in that era. Have a good look at this one and then we’ll discuss.

Detail from Plate 127, Sanborn Map Company, 1901. Click to enlarge. This and other Sanborn maps of the vicinity can be accessed here through the Library of Congress.

Remember that construction of the Ross Island Bridge in 1925-1926 completely remade this landscape: the bridge essentially follows the path of Ellsworth Street, which was renamed Woodward in 1910.

Interesting to note the contour lines and the steepness between the upper line of bank and the lower line of bank, a slope angle that remains today in that area. Back then, people used a stairway to get up and down from the river.

Advertisements to Bundy’s—and later to the mid-river swimming platform and dance floor known as Windemuth—directed visitors to take the Brooklyn streetcar to the foot of Ellsworth Street where they could proceed to the water…presumably down those stairs.

Note that the structures were afloat. This makes sense. Periodic news stories about spring high water reported on Bundy’s buildings and other floating residences periodically being washed away downstream. It was a temporary community, of necessity.

The structures to the north were old then, holding disused machinery from the Inman-Poulsen Mill. The main portion of the mill was located downstream farther north along the bank, where the river was deeper and ocean-going freighters could tie up to take on lumber from the mill. Note how Sanborn observed the roof of one old building was corrugated iron roofing…always thinking fire risk.

The large house in the upper right is still standing today: the Poulsen House, built for Johan Poulsen, partner with Robert D. Inman, who had a very similar house nearby at SE 6th and Woodward that was demolished in 1958 to make room for a parking lot. The presence of the Poulsen house in relation to where the swimming took place helps us locate ourselves today.

If we could zoom out a bit on this Sanborn plate and look to the north, you would see all of the other east-west streets in the area—Grant, Sherman, Caruthers—essentially ended at the top of the bank (or ran into the Inman-Poulsen sawmill) where it dropped off to the river. We’d also see Stephens Slough (fed by Brooklyn Creek) which filled almost as far east as SE 10th Avenue that would flood whenever the river rose, where nothing was built, even though there were lot lines and streets.

There are more clues yet to find about this place, and maybe photos. We’ll keep looking.

Bundy’s: Portland’s Favorite Eastside Swimming Hole

March 26, 2023 By in Willamette River Tags: , , , 5 Comments

This week, we’ve been thinking about Bundy’s: a placename attached long ago to a portion of the eastern bank of the Willamette River opposite Ross Island. We mentioned the name in our recent post about Windemuth, the floating dance floor and swimming platform anchored off the north end of Ross Island that was popular between 1914-1924.

From the Oregon Journal, July 29, 1911

Reporting in the local papers from the early 1900s referred to a swimming venue in this area called Bundy’s Baths and the name quickly became applied in a shorthand way to signify the general vicinity we think of today on the east side of the river just north of today’s Ross Island Bridge. Over the years, we’ve bumped into passing references to Bundy’s: for instance, George Asa Eastman, the lead architect for Oregon Home Builders, had a houseboat / secondary residence in this area in the early 1900s.

The vicinity of Bundy’s today, Google Earth photo. Click to enlarge.

So, while we’ve generally thought of this area as Bundy’s, we’ve never really known where the name came from.

Furthermore, because so much has changed there in the last 100 years (including construction of the bridge), we’ve figured Bundy’s was extinct both as a place and as a name. We were pleasantly surprised this week, following the Windemuth post, to hear from a reader with a question about “Bundys Landing,” referring to the area’s later industrial years as a log and lumber loading zone for the nearby Inman-Poulsen mill, and after that a processing site for Ross Island Sand and Gravel. Maybe others have heard someone talk about Bundy’s, though it has certainly disappeared from any living memory.

This made us curious for more: Who was Bundy? What was this place? Where was it exactly? What else was going on here? What does it look like today? We love questions like this.

From The Oregonian, January 20, 1908

When he opened the eponymous bathhouse here in the spring of 1898, Thomas Bundy was in his late 70s, a British-born sailor, boat builder, real estate speculator and lover of everything related to swimming. He was known as “Captain Bundy,” though his days in a ship on water were mostly on the Great Lakes and well behind him. Reporting suggests Bundy was a quiet person, reluctant to talk about both his past (which included three marriages and various businesses), and his present, which included living on a nearby houseboat with Joe Valentine, who was like an adopted son. Bundy was a transplant to the Pacific Northwest, arriving in the early 1890s from San Francisco and living in Vancouver, Washington and then Oregon City before arriving in Portland.

His obituary from January 20, 1908 describes Bundy’s interesting life, and credits him as being a leading advocate for swimming in the Willamette River:

From The Oregonian, January 20, 1908

When it opened in late May 1898, Bundy’s vision for a swimming resort away from the downtown area drew immediate interest.

From The Oregonian, May 29, 1898

Members of the Multnomah Athletic Club began frequenting Bundy’s resort—which was also known as the Neptune Baths—and soon it became the place to go, particularly for girls and women. Swimming and diving competitions took place here and eventually the Portland Yacht Club relocated just downstream to be nearby. It was the center of gravity for river swimming in Portland. We know it was busy: The Oregonian reported Bundy’s rented out 1,300 swimming suits per day in August 1915 and that more than 40,000 people used the foot of Ellsworth Street each year in the 19-teens for landing and embarking on the river. News coverage was abundant.

Click to enlarge: From The Oregonian, August 5, 1906. Note the buildings and shoreline at Bundy’s in the diving photo above. Below, from The Oregonian on August 9, 1903 (note the sketch of Captain Bundy presiding).

Bundy’s Bath’s appears to have been a collection of simple buildings for dressing, an enclosed area for swimming, a snack bar, and a set of diving platforms on the east bank of the river at what was the foot of Ellsworth Street. Here’s a map that puts this in context, and remember this is before the Ross Island Bridge, which came along in 1926. In 1910, Ellsworth Street was renamed Woodward Street.

Detail from the 1894 paving map of Portland. Bundy’s was located where Ellsworth Street met the river. The pink roadway indicates gravel.

The vicinity of Bundy’s at the foot of Ellsworth Street was a kind of jumping off place into this watery world: if you were out on the river in this area to have fun (or to live in one of the houseboats) you passed through here. A careful look at aerial photos from the 1920s and 1930s shows a solid line of houseboats from Bundy’s south along the east bank of the river well into the bend across from Ross Island, and even lining the eastern shore of Ross Island.

1925 aerial photo. Click to enlarge.

From 1900 until the early 1920s, Bundy’s was the epicenter of swimming in this stretch of the Willamette. But by 1925, Portlanders abandoned the river because it had become the main receptacle for the city’s raw sewage, and due to heavy industrialization on this side of the river.

In fact, some credited the growing problem of raw sewage outfall as the motivation behind the swimming platform that became Windemuth, which opened in 1914 with the slogan “The only place to swim in the middle of the Willamette River, where the water is clear and clean.” The river banks were becoming clogged and foul-smelling with an awful mix of sewage and debris which could only be avoided by getting out in the current, in the middle of the river.

By 1919 the Bundy buildings on the eastern shore were sold and dismantled. In later years—long after those swimmers who loved this place had left—heavy piers and docks were constructed at the site where Bundy’s once stood to load lumber onto ships from the nearby Inman-Poulsen mill. Here’s a view from 1940:

Today, the area is a desolate, post-industrial mass of graffitied concrete behind a tall, barbed wire security fence.

We’ve paddled and pedaled through this area hundreds of times and never knew these echoes from the past. Maybe you have too. Now we know. It’s time to get back out there in the kayak and remember what was a special place.

Sunset near Bundy’s

Here’s a follow-up post that includes a bit more information and another map.

Lost Windemuth: “The Swimmerless River”

March 13, 2023 By in Historic News Clippings, Memories, Willamette River Tags: , 6 Comments

Last fall we shared amazing 100-year-old photos of the Willamette River. What a treat to be able to see and learn about river recreation in the early 1920s, including the rise of Windemuth, a popular swimming, diving and dancing resort that was afloat but anchored just downstream from the north tip of Ross Island.

From The Oregonian, July 10, 1921

We left this story on July 31, 1924, with the owner of Windemuth deciding to close the resort due to water quality concerns. Anyone reading the news stories in the hot-dry, low-water summer of 1924 could see the handwriting on the wall. Not a big surprise: much of Portland’s raw sewage was piped straight into the river. In mid-July, water tests had noted the presence of Bacillus coli in the water and City Council hinted at a swimming closure.

From The Oregonian, July 16, 1924

Ten days later, during City Council’s hearing on the operating license for Windemuth, the focus was on the looming swimming ban and the presence of sewers. Windemuth operator John A. Jennings signaled he was ready to move the floating resort anywhere the water was clear, but with Portland’s sewage system relying almost entirely on the Willamette River, there was no central alternative. Maybe build intercepting sewers that would shunt sewage to the Columbia River, wondered City Health Officer George Parrish, who had suddenly been called on to deliver a solution to swimming in the Willamette (see the last paragraph below).

From The Oregonian, July 25, 1924

The primary culprit was the Lents Trunk Sewer, a 5.2 mile tunnel, 56 inches by 71 inches in size, that emptied into the river at Harney Street, a stone’s throw from the diving boards at Windemuth. When it opened in August 1923, the line received sewage from about 30,000 homes as far east as Foster Road. In addition to the Lents Trunk Sewer, two additional lines—the Insley Avenue Sewer and the Carolina Street Sewer—also discharged into the river directly across from Ross Island and upstream from Windemuth. We’ll remember the boom in home construction and population in the early 1920s. It all had to go somewhere.

In early August after Windemuth was closed and swimming banned from the river, an editorial writer from the Oregon Journal spent Sunday afternoon rowing from downtown out and around Ross Island. The heartbreaking column on August 5, 1924 was an elegy for the river:

From the Oregon Journal, August 5, 1924

We actually catch a glimpse of the floating Windemuth in the center toward the bottom of this 1925 aerial photo, one year after its closure. There’s lots to look at here, so we’ve pointed out a few things including the houseboats that once lined the river in this location—a Bohemian community of artists, architects, writers and others; floating log rafts awaiting the saw at nearby mills; the location of the future Ross Island Bridge which would come along in 1926, and the floating rectangle that was Windemuth.

Detail of 1925 aerial photo with labels added. Click to enlarge.

Meanwhile, John A. Jennings was busily trying to find a way to salvage some aspect of the Willamette River swimming tradition and the market niche he had created with Windemuth, announcing bold plans to build a giant swimming tank on the north end of the island.

From The Oregonian, May 24, 1925

But Jennings’ vision was never fully realized: he died of a heart attack in April 1927. Some small related buildings existed on the island then, and the new bridge loomed overhead just downstream. The fate of the actual structure of floating Windemuth was never reported on.

The view from the new bridge down to the former much-loved site of lost Windemuth was a painful a reminder of what had been. This letter writer to the Oregon Journal was tired of looking at it and ready to move on to the next chapter:

From the Oregon Journal, July 10, 1928

For more on how Windemuth’s final chapter came to a close, read our post from July 2024 about the 100th anniversary of its voluntary closure, and the relicensing process at Portland City Council.

Join for an evening of local history – March 1, 2023 at Fremont United Methodist Church

February 18, 2023 By in Neighborhood History Tags: 9 Comments

Looking southwest at the corner of NE 24th and Fremont, early 1920s. Note delivery bike visible behind power pole. OrHi 49061.

In collaboration with the Alameda Neighborhood Association, I’ll be presenting a local history program Wednesday, March 1st from 7:30-9:00 p.m. at the Fremont United Methodist Church (2620 NE Fremont), and you’re invited (RSVPs required, see below).

Using early maps, documents, photos and newspaper accounts—and memories collected from past residents—we’ll explore how forests and fields defined the landscape of Portland’s eastside. Then, as a young city sprawled across the river, the rural landscape was replaced by a grid of neighborhoods, a busy streetcar system and tens of thousands of new residents. Successive waves of homebuilding and change in the decades that followed shaped the neighborhoods we know today.

This illustrated one-hour program explores the early years of Alameda, Beaumont-Wilshire, Sabin, Vernon, Concordia, and Cully as we examine connections between past, present and future.

To reserve your spot for the March 1 program, e-mail the Alameda Neighborhood Association at alamedanewsletter@gmail.com. Reservation deadline is February 24th. Doors open at 7:00 and the association will have light refreshments on hand.

The Alameda Neighborhood Association is a neighbor-led board that advocates for smart policies, takes action on neighbors’ concerns, facilitates communication about neighborhood issues, hosts events to bring residents together and publishes the quarterly newsletter AlamedaPDX.

A hidden place called Gleneyrie

December 12, 2022 By in Alameda Park, Maps, The Plats Tags: , , , 2 Comments

Today, we think of the Alameda neighborhood as one contiguous area with well-recognized boundaries: The city’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement identifies Alameda as that area from Prescott on the north to Knott on the south; from NE 21st on the west to NE 33rd on the East. One single named neighborhood today, containing about 2,400 dwellings and more than 5,000 people.

But hiding underneath today’s one single map is a treasure of 23 old maps—subdivision plats—all drawn at different times by different people as they transformed this landscape one small piece at a time from forests and fields to the grid of streets we know today. We’ve been taking a systematic look at these plats, some of which like one particularly chaotic collision just north of Knott, we’ve written about.

Here’s one we’ve been looking into recently: Gleneyrie, a subdivision plat filed in July 1911 by three couples who were the principals of the Tate Investment Company: Thomas and Inez Foster; Jost and Maria Held; and Robert and Nellie Tate. That fall, they placed their first ad for the property, below, which was then still just a concept (click in for a larger view).

From The Oregonian, October 22, 1911

The Tate Company investors purchased their 24 acres of the former Bowering Homestead Donation Land Claim in the years after the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition with an eye toward real estate development. The surrounding open fields, orchards and dairy property were rapidly being converted to residential use to keep up with Portland’s booming real estate market and population. And there was much money to be made by investors ready to speculate on a rising market. The Tate Investment Company also developed Dixon Place, another plat just north of Fremont between NE 15th and NE 21st avenues.

Here’s a look at the official Gleneyrie plat, filed with the Multnomah County Surveyor and County Clerk on July 25, 1911: from NE 24th to NE 29th, between Siskiyou and Knott.

One week later, Tate added additional area to Gleneyrie taking in East 26th and 27th north to the existing boundary on the eastern edge of the plat.

The namesake Gleneyrie was a Tudor-style castle in Colorado built in 1871 by William Jackson Palmer, founder of Colorado Springs: big, beautiful, fancy and well-known. And the name sounded good too, which was key. By 1915, Portland developers had filed more than 900 plats—development plans that divide an acreage into a subdivision of lots and streets—many of which were as small as one block or less, and all named by developers searching for an attractive sounding name.

Today’s Alameda neighborhood is made up of 23 separate plats, all filed at different times by different developers who were competing with each other and speculating on market conditions when they bought chunks of what had been old homesteads and farms claimed in the 1850s and 1860s.

In some areas the plats have retained their distinct personality and name. But here in Alameda—named for the 1909 Alameda Park Addition plat filed just to the north—the identity of the individual plats like Gleneyrie eventually dissolved into the commonly used neighborhood name we know today.

But in the Spring of 1913, when having a catchy name might help compete with all the other real estate advertising, the Tate Investment Company pushed out a series of full-page and half-page illustrated ads in The Oregonian and the Oregon Journal to market the attributes of their new subdivision. And they tied their marketing more closely to Irvington—a well established prestigious brand—than to Alameda, which had just been launched (and was trying to coattail on Irvington as well).

From The Oregonian, April 14, 1913

From The Oregonian, April 20, 1913

While all this advertising was underway, work out on the ground of what was Gleneyrie transformed the property from what were rolling fields into a mostly level subdivision. Significant grading work was done on the property to remove hills and fill in swales and ponds. Newspaper accounts from 1913 indicated 50,000 cubic yards of fill was removed: that’s more than 4,000 modern-day dump truck loads.

One of the leading early builders in Gleneyrie was Arnt Anderson, one of the two-dozen-plus builders we’ve written about on The Builders page. Anderson built some amazing homes that have passed the test of time…before he was arrested, convicted and imprisoned for grand larceny.

Today, ask anyone to tell you where Gleneyrie is and you’ll probably get a blank stare. But back in the day, the folks at the Tate Investment Company were trying hard to make it a household name. Literally.

Wondering about the other 22 plats in today’s Alameda? Here’s the full list: Alameda Park, Homedale, Olmsted Park, Irvington, Edgemont, Pearson’s Addition, Town of Wayne, Town of Wayne Replat, Waynewood, Irvingwood, Meadow Park, Dunsmeade, Irvindale, Hillside, George Place, Gile Addition, Bowering Donation Land Claim Tract, Norton’s Subdivision, Stanton Street Addition, Hudson’s Addition and Meadow Park.

100-year-old photos offer a fresh look at the Willamette River in downtown Portland

November 14, 2022 By in Memories, Old Photos, Photo Detective, Willamette River Tags: , , , , , , 7 Comments

We’ve been helping a long-time Northeast Portland family sort through their 100-year-old photo albums to identify some mystery locations and develop context about important family places. We love working with old photos (there’s a whole category here on the blog called Photo Detective dedicated to the topic which we think makes interesting reading and looking).

100 years ago, this family loved to play outside and one of their favorite places was the Willamette River between Swan Island and Oak Grove. Like so many young Portlanders of that era, their key to exploring these places was a canoe.

Departing from The Favorite Boathouse under the west end of the old Morrison Bridge, a swing bridge built in 1905 that was replaced in 1958 by the bridge we know today. In the photo above looking to the east, the eastern span of the old bridge is swung open to allow heavy river traffic to pass.

Along with front-porch moments of young families, babies and World War 1 soldiers returning home to Northeast Portland, the albums contain pages and pages of river adventures from the summer of 1919. Since we are frequently in the same waters by kayak and canoe, finding these glimpses struck close to home and got us wondering about the connection between Portlanders and the Willamette 100 years ago. These young people clearly were connected with their river, which looks to have connected them with each other in the special way that rivers do.

A boathouse on the west bank of the Willamette just south of the Morrison Bridge seemed to be at the heart of many adventures, a place appropriately called “The Favorite Boathouse.”

A look through the Oregon Journal and The Oregonian during these years opens a window into just how many young Portlanders took to local waters by canoe. At the time, Ross Island and Swan Island were outposts for recreation (and Swan Island was still very much an island). In 1916, both were destinations for organized outdoor recreation.

From the Oregon Journal, April 20, 1916.

From The Oregonian, April 25, 1921

A popular destination for Willamette paddlers in the late 19-teens and early 1920s was Windemuth, a giant floating swimming pool and dance pavilion anchored in the river off the northern tip of Ross Island. By day, Windemuth featured swimming competitions and all manner of water play. By night, hundreds of paddlers arrived to dance on the floating dance floor.

From the Oregon Journal, July 14, 1923

The Favorite and other boathouses rented canoes for couples and groups to paddle upstream to Windemuth for the summer evening dances. If you didn’t want to paddle, you could pay to ride a scheduled “motor launch” from downtown. Or from the eastside, you could take the Brooklyn Streetcar to the foot of Woodward Street and catch a short boat ride across to the floating pavilion.

Unfortunately (and not surprisingly) there were frequent swampings of canoes from the wakes of the many steamships active in Portland harbor, and regular drownings, often at night, coming and going to the islands.

From The Oregonian, May 14, 1923

On Swan Island north of downtown, the beach in summer was filled with canoes that brought young Portlanders over the waters to sunbathe, picnic and camp.

Looking toward downtown from near the beach on Swan Island. Note the Victrola record player in the front of the canoe. The Victrola and its records, picnic boxes, bags of clothes and camping gear show up as payload in multiple photos. Summer 1919.

Handed down family stories describe young people swimming among and playing on the many rafts of logs that were tied up along the Willamette banks awaiting use by local sawmills. During these years, log rafts lined both shores from the Sellwood Bridge to St. Johns.

Taken on the western shore of Swan Island looking to Portland’s west side, with two canoes. The sawmill on the far side of the river is the Northern Pacific Lumber Company mill located in the vicinity of today’s Terminal 2 on NW Front Avenue. The very large building in the background is the old St. Vincent Hospital located on Northwest Westover. A log raft is visible anchored just off the near shore behind the canoes. Summer 1919.

Family members enjoyed paddling farther south, around the Milwaukie bend at Elk Rock Island and upstream under the Union Pacific Railroad Bridge at Lake Oswego to the vicinity of today’s River Villa Park, a nice six-mile paddle from the northern tip of Ross Island.

Elk Rock Island, Summer 1919

Looking north toward the Union Pacific Railroad Bridge at Lake Oswego (built in 1910), which is still in use and marks the northern edge of today’s River Villa Park in Oak Grove.

But by the mid 1920s, Portland’s recreational relationship with the river was about to take a major turn, due to health concerns resulting from the reality that the city’s raw sewage went straight into the river.

From the Oregon Journal, July 31, 1924

The shutdown relegated moonlight canoe trips to wistful memories a generation later. Below, from the Oregon Journal, May 5, 1946.

Next: More about Windemuth and Willamette River water quality in 1924. Special thanks to Steve Erickson and the Schaecher family for allowing us to share these amazing photos.

An exercise in seeing

November 7, 2022 By in House Styles, Observed, Remodel Tags: , , , , 8 Comments

It’s been a busy fall around here with work on national register nominations, house history studies completed and underway, guided history walks and some river time. But not a lot of blog posting…time to get back in that groove.

We’ve just wrapped up the study of a 1911 “Colonial revival” style home in Irvington that reinforces the importance of looking at a thing long enough to actually see it. This is an important lesson whenever it arrives, and we appreciated it as such. We thought you might too.

Maybe you’ve seen this house: the stately white two-plus story home at the southwest corner of NE 21st Avenue and Knott. It’s just come on the market.

Viewed from Knott Street looking south, this house wants you know it’s in the Colonial Revival style, complete with the Georgian style doorway, bay window and upstairs shutters. Photo courtesy of Lulu Barker.

Below, the same house, viewed from NE 21st looking west, and in context with the house just to the south—which as it turns out is actually its twin, built at the same time by the same builder.

A good way to gauge the magnitude of change is to stand east of the two houses and compare, knowing they were built as Arts and Crafts twins originally in 1911. Photographed October 2022.

The two houses were built between November 1910-March 1911 by brothers-in-law James E. Coleman and Robert J. Ginn doing business as Coleman & Ginn. Both men were farmers with ties to Moro in Sherman County and had been drawn to Portland by its booming real estate business. The house to the south sold quickly, but the corner house with its front porch and entry facing NE 21st didn’t sell, so the Coleman family moved in for a few years until departing Portland for Moro during the economic downturn of the late 19-teens.

The next family—George and Hulda Guild—made some big changes. For the first few years, all their documents of record used the NE 21st Avenue address (which was 555 East 21st Street North, in the taxonomy of Portland’s pre-Great Renumbering address change).

But in the fall of 1920, all of the official documents for this house and the newspaper social listings stop reciting the NE 21st address and begin orienting to Knott Street. The formal entrance to the house had been shifted from the east-facing front porch entry of the original Arts and Crafts house on NE 21st Avenue, to a new Colonial Revival front entry facing north toward Knott Street.

This choice may have been driven in part by the rising popularity of the Colonial Revival style. By the early 1920s, large three-story Arts and Crafts homes were slipping out of vogue in favor of multiple revival styles. Another factor may have been the prestige of having a Knott Street address. Irvington homes facing Knott Street are typically grander than many of the homes on numbered streets, and perhaps George Guild, as president of Columbia Paper Box Company, would rather have resided on Knott Street than on 21st.

Whatever the reason, conversion would not have been simple. The distinctive Arts and Crafts dormers (on the north side) overhanging eaves and other architectural details were removed and the interior configuration and floor plan dramatically changed to accommodate entry from the north side of the house. There’s no documentation of this work on file with the city, so no record of date or extent, though a reasonable guess is the summer of 1920 when the Guilds started using their new Knott Street address.

Being able to see this transformation is all in how you look at it, where you look at it from, and the clues that history can bring, reminding us in a helpful way to question our perceptions and the things we think we know.

In an interesting post-script, this was also the home of Alfred Powers, one of Oregon’s best known authors, Dean of Creative Writing and Publishing for the Oregon university system, editor at Binford & Mort, and author of 18 books. During the years Alfred and wife Molly lived there (1942-1961), this house also held one of the largest private libraries in Oregon.

Alameda’s C.J. and Lillian Smith House: Setting the record straight on C.C. Rich

August 30, 2022 By in Alameda Park, Historic News Clippings Tags: , , , 3 Comments

When Dr. Charles Johnson Smith and Lillian Belle Guillford Smith built their mansion on Alameda Ridge in 1915, they had just come off his unsuccessful campaign for Oregon Governor, losing by a convincing margin to Republican James Withycombe, but considering a run for some other office or public service. They were also launching a new chapter in their lives—relocating to Portland from a quarter-century of public life and Dr. Smith’s medical practice in Pendleton.

Their new home at 864 The Alameda (readdressed during the Great Renumbering as 2834 NE Alameda) symbolized that ascendency: a graceful blend of English country house and Arts and Crafts style; a commanding view of downtown with a presence on the ridge among neighbors who were the captains of industry and Portland society; plenty of room to entertain.

The relatively unformed Alameda Park addition spreading out around them was just six years old and less than 15 percent of the available lots had been bought or built when the Smiths acquired two lots at the bend of The Alameda—as the street was known until the early 1930s—and hired local architect Charles C. Rich to design their dream home. Because of Smith’s prominence in the public eye, and the growing interest in residential development in this area, his real estate choices made news:

From The Oregon Journal, August 1, 1915

Homebuilding was in a slowdown due to economic conditions, so any building news was good news, and local newspapers paid close attention to milestones in their construction process. As the summer of 1915 unfolded, a series of short news items documented issuance of the building permit to builder James L. Quinn; excavation on the ridge and framing of the foundation as well as advertising for plumbing and electrical bids on August 25th; and construction of the retaining wall above Regents Drive on October 3, 1915. Capping off all the construction news coverage was this final piece, which appeared in the Oregon Journal on March 19, 1916:

In the 1980s, design of the home was mistakenly credited to Portland architectural giant Ellis Lawrence, who was active at this same time and in the same style, and who was friends with architect Charles C. Rich and with Smith family daughter Gwendoline (who in a big society wedding in the family home in 1917 married Harry Ashley Ely, another member of that friend group). All three men were involved in formation of the City Club of Portland. Rich and Lawrence were also faculty colleagues at the University of Oregon School of Architecture.

The original building permit documents, multiple news stories from 1915-1916, and the actual blue prints (which still exist, against all odds) make it very clear this house was designed by Charles C. Rich, not Ellis Lawrence. Just wanted to set that record straight.

The Smiths lived in the home until 1927, followed by the Arthur and Louise Nicolai family until 1946; Emily and Earl Grove until 1961; and the Kuzmaak family until 2019. The house was recently completely renovated by the Arnal family.

More builder & architect profiles

August 30, 2022 By in Builders Tags: , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Our house history research practice provides a steady stream of insight about neighborhood development while also allowing us to get to know the builders, the buildings they built, the early residents, and the times they all lived through.

From The Oregonian, September 9, 1923

In addition to the recent piece on florist-turned-builder Carl F. Ruef, we’ve added 10 new names to The Builders page, joining background on more than 20 other builders. Below is a synopsis of these newly added crafts people. Click each name to see their stories and the addresses they’ve designed and built…you might find your home or one you know!

Forrest W. Ayers

Builder of eastside Craftsman bungalows in the teens and 1920s.

Willis Chandler

From 1926-1928, Chandler built more than a dozen homes in Beaumont near the intersection of NE 41st and Alameda.

Ernest L. Graves

Part booster, part builder, Graves parlayed his experience as an engineer in World War 1 into an ability to manage large projects, building more than 70 bungalows in Irvington during the height of the building boom 1925-1926. Graves worked with architect H.H. Menges whose motto was “You furnish the lot, and I’ll furnish the plans.”

Orlo Ray William Hossack

Architect of stately homes in the Irvington and Dolph Park neighborhoods and beyond, and large government and institutional buildings like the Washington County Courthouse and Masonic lodges throughout the region, Hossack paused his successful architectural practice in the mid 1930s to go to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps and died on remote assignment in Idaho.

Emil Nelson

Advertising himself as “Master Builder” and Builder of Finer Homes,” this Swedish immigrant built dozens of homes in Alameda, Rose City Park and Eastmoreland.

Ralph Panhorst

Architect Ralph Panhorst grew up in Northeast Portland in the 19-teens and opened his own architectural practice at the age of 26, focusing on homes and apartment buildings. He was later known for his mid-century modern designs.

Ewald Theodore Pape

While not a registered architect, German immigrant E.T. Pape designed classic residences in Alameda, Laurelhurst, Eastmoreland and Dolph Park and a half-dozen mid-sized apartment buildings, three of which today are on the National Register of Historic Places.

James L. Quinn

This Scottish immigrant builder started out building bungalows in Montavilla and a four-square on NE Broadway before building Grant High School and multiple large projects in Portland and in the Klamath Falls area.

Charles C. Rich

A practicing architect in Portland and on the faculty at the University of Oregon School of Architecture in 1916-1917, Rich designed public buildings, wrote columns on architecture for The Oregonian, and finished a high profile Alameda home before leaving architecture and Oregon for good in 1918.