Two new profiles to add to The Builders collection, both Swedish immigrants, one who had a brother in the business that we have already profiled, though they chose to spell their last names differently.
Stockholm Harbor, summer 2023
Herman Nelson, who immigrated through Canada in his early 20s a few years ahead of his younger brother builder Emil Nilson; and August Malmquist, or as he is more frequently referred to on building permits as A.C. Malmquist. Learning more about the third Nelson/Nilson brother, Oscar, is still on our to-do list.
Included in all of these profiles is a list of homes built by these builders, so by all means check to see if your address is here.
These three Swedish carpenters built hundreds of houses in Northeast Portland neighborhoods, and operated mostly as Mom-and-Pop businesses, with spouses’ names occasionally showing up on real estate transactions. Their business was building houses, but they were family people too, and were active members in the Swedish community in Oregon.
We are reminded about the contributions made by so many immigrants to the shaping of these neighborhoods, and about the racial restrictions and systems that have kept others away.
There’s been a spike of recent interest here on the blog about original construction dates and early builders, which is great. Every house has an origin story all its own and they’re always interesting. I’m currently working on profiles of several more builders to join the 25 already in The Builders section, and I’ve appreciated the suggestions from readers about who to focus on next.
Thinking about these things, I am reminded about the study of building inspection cards I did a few years back which really helped me understand geographic patterns of growth, Portland’s early waves of expansion and recession, and a very busy group of early homebuilders.
Construction inspection card from 1921 for Alameda School.
On many evenings over two years in the mid-2000s, I was granted research access behind the counter at the Bureau of Development Services to examine construction inspection cards. Slowly and carefully, I handled every inspection card in the Alameda Park addition and noted details into a growing record. While my scope of interest is much wider than just Alameda, it’s hard to boil the ocean so I had to define the boundaries of the search. The thought of recording details from every eastside inspection card (by hand) is overwhelming.
Back in 2010, I posted a summary of that research here on the blog. Because AH is up to about 300 posts since 2007, it’s possible current readers haven’t seen it. I realize that’s an ongoing challenge, by the way, of wayfinding through the content here (try using the categories feature, with drag-down menus which you can find on the far right edge of the blog).
We’ve been exploring the early history of the 1913 Arts and Crafts bungalow at 2503 NE Mason—one of the three we wrote about last week—and the plot has thickened. Its builder, a relocated Canadian citizen, Colorado miner, and livery stable owner, moved to Portland in 1911 and became a home builder, ship builder, all-around handyman and eventually a property developer working on projects in the Hollywood area and near Mt. Hood.
According to building permit and real estate records, Sterling A. Rogers started excavating the basement the very same week he bought the vacant lot in the recently platted Alameda Park addition for $823 in May 1913.
Sterling and wife Lena had arrived in Portland in 1911 after selling their horses, home and livery business in Dunton, Colorado to his brother Robert. Sterling and Lena, then 29 and 26 respectively, had enough of the hard winters in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. After a winter escape to the West Coast in 1909, they must have decided it was time to leave. Sterling had been a kind of renaissance man in Dunton, locating mines, constructing buildings, acquiring and looking after horses and wagons.
The Telluride Daily Journal described him like this in its May 23, 1903 edition:
Sterling Rogers, postmaster, merchant, hotel proprietor, and all around monopolist, of Dunton, was an arrival from the south on last evening’s train. He remained overnight and left this morning for Denver. He says that owing to the horrible condition of the roads between the Coke Ovens and Dunton, he cannot get enough lumber to put the finishing touches on his new hotel, but expects to be able to move into the building within the next two or three weeks.
Sterling finished the hotel, and added a pool and baths at the nearby hot springs, but in early 1911 the couple left for Portland. By December, he and Lena were buying vacant lots in the Vernon and Woodlawn neighborhoods. If the hard Colorado winters didn’t drive them out, could be they saw the writing on the wall: by 1919, Dunton had become a deserted and dilapidated ghost town, sidelined by its remoteness and primitive transportation connections, which Sterling knew all too well.
Rogers finished the Mason Street bungalow in August 1913 and advertised it for lease for $30 per month through the fall and early winter while the couple lived there:
From The Oregonian, January 18, 1914
Like many young Portland builders of that time, Sterling was trying to leverage financial momentum by living briefly in his brand-new house built on speculation, leasing or selling it quickly, and using the proceeds to fund other projects that could lead to a next-level income. The couple continued to buy, trade for, and seek additional vacant lots on the eastside. In the spring and summer of 1915, Sterling the entrepreneur was busy:
From The Oregonian, May 9, 1915
From The Oregon Journal, August 8, 1915
Sterling was not a butcher. The meat market had belonged to Daniel and Ethel Dyer, who not coincidentally had moved into the Mason Street house for about a year in 1916, under what must have been a creative financial agreement. But that didn’t last, and by 1917, Sterling and Lena were back. And according to auto registration records, they had indeed been accumulating quite a few vehicles, all registered to the Mason Street house.
In 1918, at age 35, Sterling registered for the World War 1 draft and gave his occupation as a ship carpenter (as well as his height at 5’9”, weight at 140, blue eyes and black hair) and home address as 801 Mason, today’s 2503. That year, he also petitioned for citizenship and renounced his allegiance to George the Fifth, King of the United Kingdom and the British dominions. Rogers had been born in the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island (Canada was then under the dominion of Great Britain). Lena was from South Dakota.
Meanwhile, the couple had been buying property along Sandy Boulevard and by 1920 they moved to a home long since torn down at the northeast corner of 43rd and Sandy. Sterling continued to speculate in real estate, take on repair jobs and build small bungalows—none as distinctive as the Mason Street house. In 1933 it looked like he was going to make it big with a planned development of summer homes on Mt. Hood (which sounds a lot like what is today’s Brightwood).
From The Oregonian, May 21, 1933
But the Great Depression of the early 1930s was a hard time to be building or selling anything. Sterling died of tuberculosis in 1936; his death certificate showed he had struggled with the disease since the mid 19-teens.
Rogers built it – Who designed it?
A look at the handful of relatively non-descript bungalows Sterling built in the 19-teens and 1920s—absent decorative trim, built-ins, columns or beveled glass—makes us think 2503 is a kit home, meaning he bought it as a package to be assembled, which was relatively common then. The design-forward detail of 2503 (see for yourself) is so unlike anything else he built.
So we’ve been poring over kit house and plan set catalogs looking for family resemblances. The external door and window trim is distinctive on this house, as are the three long beveled glass panel interior and exterior doors. Haven’t found it yet, but we’ll keep looking.
Having researched many early home builders, we’re well acquainted with the blend of boot-strap, hard-scrabble entrepreneurship they and their families brought to the building of our neighborhoods.
The homes we live in—the materials they are built with, and the people who did the building—are from a different era that’s hard to imagine today. Each of our homes has its own origin story, the windows, walls and ceilings shaped by people whose stories we’ll never know.
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 2023, courtesy Robin Springer, Windermere Realty Trust, and Ruum Media.
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.
We’ve been down enough amazing research rabbit holes to recognize a special gem when we see one.
This spring, AH friend Brian Burk completed a research odyssey that turned up fascinating clues about the Vanport flood, an extinct airfield, daredevil pilot Tex Rankin, and one particular old barn and house, all of it centered on North Portland’s Delta Park. He calls it A Mysterious Vanport Survivor.Truly worth 15 minutes of your time. Note that you have to scroll down from the main page to see all the good stuff.
Brian’s multi-media website weaves all these pieces together artfully—along with his history detective narrative —to provide a lens that will change the way you look at a local landscape and history you thought you knew.
Brian is a multi-media journalist, born and raised in Northeast Portland, who loves documenting the beauty of the world and its people through still and moving images. You can see more of his work here.
Our 1912 Arts and Crafts bungalow has been home to eight families in its 110 years and I’ve made a point of connecting with someone from almost all of them. Seeing the house through the eyes and experiences of others has allowed my family to know this place in a unique way during our 30-plus years here, to appreciate the changes in life, community and in the fabric of the house itself over that century.
During these pandemic years I’ve been busy with a special project to connect past and present that’s both tangible and personal. This week it all came to fruition when modern-day craftsmen carefully reinstalled the three original stained-glass windows—now restored—that were removed from the house almost 50 years ago.
As a lover of old buildings and a person who appreciates homecomings, it was a take-your-breath-away moment when Carl put the last panel in place this week. Here, have a look:
Carl Klimt and the “golden spike” moment when the last wayward window was set into place, April 27, 2022.
Tracking down these three windows, understanding the circumstance of their removal and their subsequent travels, and getting them back in shape to be reunited with the house has been a story marked by chapters of kindness, generosity, good luck and persistence. At the heart of this labor of love, it’s been a story about putting pieces back together.
The setting
In late 1911 and early 1912, builder William B. Donahue completed a lone bungalow on NE 30th Avenue, the only house on the block at the time, located just a half block east from the end point of the Broadway Streetcar line, right next to the temporary “tract office” of the Alameda Land Company. Donahue knew the house would be a demonstration of sorts to show what he could build for potential homebuyers. So even though it was just a simple bungalow, he added some nice touches, including stained-glass and beveled-glass windows in all the right places inside and out.
Detail of the restored windows.
Donahue’s floorplan included a breakfast nook between the formal dining room and the kitchen, with full wainscot paneling and a plate rail. For this welcoming, family-friendly room he chose a bank of high window openings to install three rose-patterned stained-glass windows.
Which is where the windows presided as four families cycled through the house: wars, pandemics, business ventures, children, dogs, birthdays and deaths, leavetakings, joys and losses. All discussed and decided at the nook table under those three beautiful windows.
The removal
The family who lived here from 1961 to 1975 loved this house. And when it came time for them to leave, they wanted to bring a piece of it with them, a keepsake and reminder of all their good memories here. The daughters were fledging and they agreed to each take a window, a gift from their father, who removed the sash and replaced them with three plain sheets of glass. The stained-glass was removed from the old window frames and put into new oak frames for display. One went to Arizona. One went to Spokane, and one stayed with the parents in Milwaukie. The windows continued to bring the comfort of family memories from their old home. Time passed as four more families cycled through under the blank window-eyes of the breakfast nook. No one here knew anything different.
The discovery
As I researched the story of this house, I sought out the families who lived here and I even found a relative of builder William B. Donahue. Through oral history interviews and letters, I learned about the view from the porch across empty lots clear to the 33rd Street Woods. Brothers playing on the roof. The goat and wagon that came for a visit. The upright piano that lived in the front hall. The life-long memory from the little boy sprawled out on the floor of the nook reading books while colored light streamed in around him, filtered through those stained glass windows. So many stories.
In November 2004, we hosted the Mom of the house from the 1960s on an impromptu visit when she dropped by the street to say hello to her old neighbors who still lived two doors down. When she walked through the house, wistfully, she mentioned the stained glass windows in the nook.
Because we had been dreaming about finding the old columns that were torn out of the living room in the 1940s by an earlier family (which we later faithfully rebuilt based on those I found still in existence in a similar Donahue-built house a few blocks away), her mention of stained glass windows in the nook was a very timely little bolt of lightning. Earlier that year we had restored the original front porch, which had also been demolished in the 1940s (a tough decade for old houses).
A few weeks after her visit, a photo and brief note arrived in the mail showing the old window she still had hanging in her kitchen. We almost couldn’t believe that rose-patterned window was once here.
When this photo and note arrived in the mail from a former resident we were ecstatic, but we also wondered, “Wait, what? That window was here?”
Through conversation over the months and years that followed, it emerged that her daughters still had the other two which had become sentimental companions from their growing up years. I began to imagine bringing the windows back here where they started. That was 18 years ago.
The return
In the last several years, with the thoughtful help of her son (now grown and with a family of his own), and through persistent friendly stories from me about the home’s history and our careful work of putting the pieces back together, a pathway began to emerge: when the family reached that point we all eventually reach of readiness to simplify our lives and possessions, the windows would be welcomed back home. Just as the family took solace in bringing them away when they left, we would find solace in their return.
Back and forth correspondence, phone calls, soul searching, acceptance and finally, readiness. Two of the windows came first: one of the daughters had passed away and the other was ready to release her window with her sister’s. Then a year later, the Mom of the house, now in her mid 80s, was ready to give us the third one. The day we met with her to receive it felt like an adoption.
The recovery
By then, I had fortunately found Jakub Kucharczyk, the art glass master who runs The Glaziery based here in Northeast Portland. Jakub and his team are one of a handful of knowledgeable and capable artists and craftspeople nationally who know old glass like ours and more importantly have the expertise to restore it using old ways and original materials.
Resoldering one of the zinc channel borders. Zinc is more rigid than lead and perfect for art glass windows like these that need to stand up to wind, gravity and time.Photo courtesy of Jakub Kucharczyk, The Glaziery.
When Jakub examined our well-traveled windows he pointed out the hand-blown crackle glass from Germany that make up the tiles across the bottom, the subtle peach and rose colored Kokomo catspaw granite glass of the flower petals, the zinc channel borders that outline the shapes.
Most of the zinc joints were in pretty good shape but a few needed new flux and solder. One of the crackle glass panels needed to be replaced and Jakub had just the right old piece that looked like it came from the same batch. Even though a few pieces of the art glass were broken, we left them in favor of preserving the original materials, and Jakub made them as steady as could be. All the glass needed a good clean up, and all three panels were reputtied.
Removing the zinc border to replace one of the broken crackle glass panes. The blue masking material was placed over all the glass at the beginning of restoration as a protection.
Working with glass like this has become a lost art. 110 years ago, most cities had a competitive art glass workforce and marketplace. Today, Jakub and his team service an international marketplace looking to them to restore worn out windows and to build fine new art glass. This winter, he and his team removed the oak display frames built in the 1970s and made our panels ready for the next 100 years.
The new crackle glass panel is sized and inserted into the channel.
Meanwhile Stephen Colvin and Carl Klimt at The Sashwright Co. came out to measure the openings and teach us about window stops, reveals and hardware. Dale Farley at Wooddale Windows (also here in northeast Portland) took those dimensions and built new Douglas-fir sash for our old glass just the way the old-timers would, another lost art.
Back and forth we shuttled, dropping off the windows with Jakub for restoration, retrieving the new sash from Dale and delivering it back so Jakub could install the restored windows. Once we had them home, we matched the stain to the existing interior window trim in the nook and Marie painstakingly painted and stained them. Marie is very good at painstaking work.
Fast forward to this week. Carl and his crew returned for the install. I believe they were as excited as we were to make this reunion possible. Out came the empty-eyed single panes. And very carefully one at a time the old windows, newly sashed, were fit and snugged back into the openings they once knew.
The Sashwright Co. team prepares to remove the clear glass panes that were put in place when the original windows were removed in the 1970s.
I still can’t quite believe they’re back. Every time we pass by, we stand and admire how these windows re-dignify that space, how they bring even more color and life back into the room. It’s still the place you want to sit in the morning with a cup of tea to contemplate the day ahead, or for friendly conversation at dinner.
But these time traveling windows now-come-home have made this space something more, a kind of shrine to the house itself, its builder, the craftspeople who have helped repair and restore it, and more than a century of friends and family who have passed through.
We’re writing this month about Sullivan’s Gulch. Some readers have wondered what makes this geographic feature a gulch—which Webster’s defines as a deep or precipitous cleft, a ravine—and where exactly it is. Good questions.
A couple of maps of the area might help. Take a look first at 1897:
In this 1897 USGS quadrangle map (used here courtesy of City of Portland Archives) we see Sullivan Gulch called out specifically on Portland’s eastside, and you can follow the contour lines (each one represents about 25 feet in elevation change) showing the depression or ravine that begins on the east at about today’s NE 60th and runs west to the Willamette. We feel about 60th is probably the reasonable eastern edge of the gulch, which functioned as a sub-watershed funneling water downhill to the Willamette River.
By the way, while you’re looking at this neat old map (click to enlarge), have a good look around and see how many features and roads you can identify, and be sure to take a look at the extent of development in eastside neighborhoods: Woodlawn and part of Irvington are there. Concordia-Vernon-Sabin-Alameda and points east are not. Can you spot the Alameda Ridge? Don’t you wish you could explore the old Columbia Bayou along the top of the map?
Most early 20th Century Portland newspaper references identified the geographic boundary of Sullivan’s Gulch as the area between today’s MLK out to about today’s NE 33rd Avenue.
There used to be plenty of other gulches that opened up into the eastern banks of the Willamette, but most of them were filled in the early days. Read more about that here.
Here’s a look at a more recent shaded relief map from National Geographic that shows elevation change and the gully running along the bottom, supporting the case that NE 60th seems to be a reasonable eastern boundary.
It’s been a place of constant change, and as we’ve seen so far, has been used pretty hard over the years. But the biggest changes were still to come.
Continuing our four-part series on Sullivan’s Gulch. The first chapter examined homestead and early railroad history. In this chapter we explore how manufacturing shaped the area during the first half of the 20th Century.
In the early 1900s, the railroad came to define Sullivan’s Gulch, connecting Portland to points east and serving a growing manufacturing presence in the gulch proper and along its shoulders.
From The Oregonian, May 7, 1911.
Engineers had filled in the marshlands at the mouth of the gulch where it met the Willamette River in an attempt to keep seasonal flooding from damaging rail infrastructure. On frigid months, the ponds that formed there—about where today’s I-84 merges with Interstate 5—were used as ice skating rinks by residents of nearby eastside neighborhoods. Other nearby gulches were used as sewers and dumping grounds, some were filled in.
The rails up the gulch were necessary infrastructure for a growing Portland, and they were a major attraction, particularly for neighborhood kids. Here’s a memory from former resident Bob Frazier, shared in the January 27, 1952 edition of the Oregon Journal:
“The gulch was a terrible place for kids, but at the time it was wonderful. In a way, living by the gulch was something like living next to a roundhouse. The trains puffing through Sullivan Gulch never failed to attract us and stir our fiendish little imaginations. Whenever we could sneak away from home for a few minutes, our crowd of 4 and 5-year-olds would bee-line for the gulch to watch No. 17, which as I recall came through sometime between nap-time and supper-time. The whistle of No. 17, screeching toward the Willamette, will, I fear, become meaningless to the next generation.”
For Frazier and his gang—and several generations of kids as surrounding neighborhoods built up—the gulch was a land of forbidden adventure that included digging caves into the slopes, hunting pheasants, building rope swings, playing with fire, and playing in deep puddles.
The legendary Oregon Railway & Navigation Engine 17 passing under the NE 33rd Avenue viaduct, January 20, 1929. The Beaver State Furniture building to the left is today’s graffiti-covered former Gordon’s Fireplace Shop at NE 33rd and Broadway. Note how much narrower the gulch was than today: major widening in the 1950s made room for the Banfield Expressway, requiring replacement of the viaduct.
Heavy manufacturers quickly found the value and utility of locating their factories along the rail line in the bottom of the gulch and along its sides: cheap close-in property not suitable for residential development; easy trans-shipment of products to distant markets; good access to workers from eastside neighborhoods, including a handy link with the streetcar system.
In 1899, the Doernbecher Manufacturing Company acquired five acres of property in the gulch at NE 28th on the north side of the tracks, where they built what TheOregon Journal referred to as “The biggest furniture factory under one roof in the world.”
From The Oregon Journal, December 25, 1904.
With thousands of factory workers reporting to this area each day, access and transportation became crucial. In 1902, a viaduct at 28th carried the 28th Street Streetcar on a spur north from the Montavilla line across the gulch where it stopped at Halsey. Two large stairways led down the north side of the gulch to the factory below. Today, it might be hard to imagine all of the activity in this area, but up until the 1940s (and the booming shipyards associated with the war effort), the Doernbecher factory had the largest industrial payroll in the Portland area.
A view of the Doernbecher Furniture Factory, looking toward the northwest, from The Oregonian, February 25, 1912. The bluff of Sullivan’s Gulch is visible behind.
By the early 1930s, residential development had completely surrounded the Doernbecher factory and while the neighbors appreciated the employment opportunities, they were having a hard time breathing and were tired of cleaning up the soot that came out of the Doernbecher chimneys.
The factory generated its own power from wood-fired boilers that belched thick smoke and ash. In August 1933, neighbors lined up to protest at city hall, including a demonstration that left an impression on at least one newspaper reporter from the Oregon Journal, writing on August 26, 1933:
“The protestants, in virtually every talk that was made, urged that they did not desire the factory removed or shut down, that they are in full sympathy with the undertaking to give more employment but that they do feel that they have submitted to the smoke nuisance as long as it can be endured and are entitled to relief.”
“A spectacular feature of the hearing was the marching up to the council desk, where the committee sat, of groups of housewives and their depositing on the desks of bags and packages of soot and cinders they had swept up in their homes.”
Company president Harry A. Green was actually arrested on October 15,1935 for continuing to ignore a city ordinance about nuisance smoke. In a hearing that week before Municipal Judge Donald E. Long, Green threatened to close and liquidate the company.
From The Oregon Journal, October 16, 1935 (left) and The Oregonian, March 21, 1936
Here’s another look at the factory—this one taken in 1947—showing that the company didn’t actually close, but continued with its operations, and with heavy smoke. In fact, the factory continued to operate until 1955 when it closed, according to Harry Green, due to unfavorable union negotiations. Today, the area functions as a giant public storage facility and in a fitting twist of history, hosts several small craft furniture studios.
Looking northwest, NE 28th and Sandy crossing at a diagonal left to right, 1947. The NE 28th Avenue viaduct spans the gulch, and a portion of the roof of the Doernbecher plant. Note the smoke plume. Source: City of Portland Archives A2005-001-577.
The street that today leads down into the gulch, under the Banfield, across the tracks and into the old factory building? It’s NE Sullivan Street.
The former Doernbecher Furniture Factory today, Google Streetview.
Just up-gulch to the east, where the ravine bends to the north, was more heavy industry and manufacturing. First a foundry, then a machine shop and other metal manufacturing, the site of today’s Hollywood West Fred Meyer eventually became the sprawling industrial campus of Willamette Hyster, later known simply as Hyster, where the company made forklifts and other heavy equipment. Hyster operations in the gulch began in the 1940s and took over parts of the surrounding neighborhood. Over the years, Hyster acquired and demolished an estimated 17 nearby homes on the flats above the gulch north and west of the factory to make room for its operations
Detail of a 1960 aerial photo that shows the location of Hyster and its neighbors. The red outline is the approximate location of today’s Hollywood West Fred Meyer. Note that the NE 33rd exit off the Banfield was east of 33rd. Photo courtesy of University of Oregon Map and Aerial Photography Library.
Hyster’s immediate gulch neighbor to the northeast was Albina Fuel, a storage yard for all things combustible: wood, sawdust, coal and heating oil. And all surrounded by a growing neighborhood that was closing in on both sides of the gulch (and within two blocks of a busy elementary school).
An early 1940s view looking south (Broadway in the foreground) at Albina Fuel at Broadway and 33rd. The viaduct over the gulch is visible in the background, with neighborhood houses just beyond. Photo courtesy of Albina Fuel.
It wasn’t just heavy manufacturing at this big bend in the gulch: A factory built in 1911 by the Oregon Home Builders at the southeast corner of 33rd and Broadway—which many of us probably remember as Gordon’s Fireplace Shop and Tarlow’s Furniture before that—was a huge cabinet and carpentry shop for its first few years.
Oregon Home Builders constructed its built-ins and kitchen cabinetry here until charismatic company president and budding pilot Oliver K. Jeffery transformed it—briefly in 1917 until funding reality caught up—into a place where spruce aircraft parts were built.
From The Oregonian, January 1, 1918. Top photo looks east on NE Broadway just east of NE 33rd.
In an August 5, 1917 story in The Oregon Journal, Jeffrey was quoted as saying his workers were cutting 25,000 board feet of spruce parts daily for airplane stock and that the product would be shipped to eastern finishing plants. He told reporters: “Large orders for finished material have been secured by my company and the present force of 26 men will soon be doubled.” The plant closed a few months later.
Many different products have been manufactured in this building over the years: excelsior, pasta, furniture. It even hosted street-facing retail including barber shops and diners in the 1940s and 1950s. From the 1960s into the late 1970s, the building was Tarlow Furniture. Today, it’s become a canvas for graffiti artists and vandals while its current owners go through the permit process for redevelopment, which will include ground floor retail and a preschool, with apartments on the second and third floors.
One little-known early Sullivan’s Gulch product was the movie business. The American Lifeograph Film Company started in 1911 as this new industry was just taking hold…for a brief time Portland could have become Hollywood. From its headquarters on the south edge of the gulch at NE 33rd and Wasco, the company made dozens of silent films. But a major fire in March 1923 wiped them out and competition from Hollywood pulled that energy and talent south.
The American Lifeograph Company had a large movie studio building at NE 33rd and Wasco, just a few blocks south of the Oregon Home Builders workshop. This photo shows the studio in a story from the Oregon Journal on February 4, 1914. The studio burned in 1923 ending the company’s presence in Portland.
Aside from all this teeming industry down in the ravine, just getting across the gulch has been a challenge for the ages, and received constant newspaper attention in the early 1900s as the city strategized about bridge construction and how to pay for it. Here’s a look to the south in the teens at the Grand Avenue bridge over the gulch.
Completion of the 21st street viaduct in October 1912 cost $70,000 and at the time was one of the most modern structures of its kind. The grand opening on October 21, 1912 featured a parade of “loaded auto-trucks, followed by a number of giant steamrollers” as if to make the point that it was sturdy.
Looking east toward the brand new 21st Street Viaduct, 1912 Source: Oregon Historical Society.
We’ve had an opportunity in the last few months to take a deep dive into the history of the Sullivan’s Gulch neighborhood, which technically runs from NE Broadway to NE Holladay between NE 11th and NE 37th, sandwiched between the Holladay Park and Irvington neighborhoods to the north, and the Kerns neighborhood to the south. There are so many interesting chapters and stories to share about the Gulch, so we thought we’d capture some of them into a few posts.
A scene from the Gulch in the 1920s, looking southeast directly toward the old Sullivan homestead on the south slopes, from about NE 16th. Click to enlarge. Note the gentle swale, and the older homes near the top of the ravine. People on the far slope are haying their land, and in the foreground, maybe drilling a well. You can see the 21st Street Viaduct at far left. Photo courtesy of Oregon Historical Society, OrHi 53652.
This week we’ll look at the original Sullivan homestead and the coming of the railroad in 1882.
Future posts will focus on the Doernbecher Furniture Manufacturing plant at NE 28th, which was one of the largest employers in Portland (and as we’ll see one of the heaviest air polluters of the early 20th Century); the golf course and Hooverville that occupied the lower gulch in the 1930s-1940s; and construction of the Banfield Expressway (which, by the way, was uniformly opposed two-to-one by Portland voters in 1946).
First, let’s get our definitions straight.
Regular AH readers know we have a fondness for Portland’s plat maps. Within Sullivan’s Gulch alone are at least eight underlying plats filed by developers, beginning with the earliest in about 1870. Plats are essentially subdivision plans for lots and streets, filed with Multnomah County. Sometimes called additions—plat boundaries are different from neighborhoods. Today’s neighborhood names are essentially social-political boundaries; plats are engineering plans. Here’s the Sullivan’s Gulch neighborhood today, according to Portland’s Office of Community and Civic Life:
More than 900 plats make up today’s City of Portland, most of them filed during the early years, by developers trying to make a favorable impression by choosing an attractive sounding name. As it turns out, what things are named is a big deal.
Something notable about plats in today’s Sullivan’s Gulch is that they were some of the earliest on Portland’s eastside, dating to the 1870s at a time when Portland was actually three towns: Portland, which was basically just the westside; East Portland, where these plats are located; and Albina to the north and east. In 1891 these three separate towns combined to create the City of Portland.
For the record, there is an actual plat called Sullivan’s Gulch, but it was filed just five years ago and relates only to about a block and a half near the corner of NE 21st and Multnomah. And of course there is the Sullivan’s addition of 1870, platted by John J. Sullivan, son of the original homesteaders Timothy and Margaret Sullivan. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Turning the clock way back, we know the Gulch was shaped by the cataclysmic floods that coursed across the region associated with the breaching of ancient Lake Missoula.
We also know and acknowledge that these lands (and all lands that make up Portland today) were taken from the Multnomah and Clackamas bands of Chinook, the Tualatin bands of the Kalapuya, the Molalla, and many other family bands and tribes, who were then forcibly removed from the home their ancestors knew for 500 generations.
The first people—who lived here and knew these lands for 10,000 years before Portland became Portland—traveled the length of the gulch and other routes between the Willamette and Sandy rivers.
Here’s the first map produced by the U.S. Government Land Office and the Surveyor General showing the surrounding area, including the Timothy and Margaret Sullivan Homestead. There’s lots to look at here, and we’ve added a few pointers in red for context.
Government Land Office Survey Map, 1852. Note that Boise-King-Sabin-Alameda-Beaumont-Wilshire was a wide swath of “burnt timber” and that Swan Island really was an island. The “Road from Portland to Tualatin Plains” roughly aligns with parts of today’s Canyon Road and the Sunset Highway. Portland was just a small grid of streets on the west side of the river (where the waters were deep enough to anchor ships).
Homesteader Timothy Sullivan left his native Ireland before the famine struck in 1847 and came to Portland about 1850 after a short time in Australia, where he met and married wife Margaret. They both became US citizens in 1855 and received title to the property from the U.S. Government in the early 1860s.
About that time, the Sullivans sold a portion of their new homestead to the Archdiocese of Portland, directly north across the street from Lone Fir Cemetery at SE Stark and 24th. Catholics could not be buried at Lone Fir Cemetery in those days, so the Diocese created a cemetery of its own—St. Mary’s Cemetery—which operated from 1858 until 1930 when the remains were relocated to the new Mt. Calvary Cemetery in southwest Portland. The site of the old St. Mary’s Cemetery is today’s Central Catholic High School.
Location of the former St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery (indicated by arrow) on lands that were originally part of the Timothy and Margaret Sullivan homestead. The site of today’s Central Catholic High School. Map source: City of Portland 18982 Renaming Map by Stengele & Schiffers, Courtesy of City of Portland Archives.
Timothy Sullivan died in the 1860s and widow Margaret in the 1880s. Yes, their remains were buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery and later exhumed and relocated to Mt. Calvary Cemetery.
Here’s one of the few visible clues to the Sullivans today, this one-block long stretch of “Sullivan Street,” which is actually more like an alley (there aren’t any street signs here, just the ghostly Google label), perched on the south edge of the gulch behind Oregon Mt. Community at NE 29th. Directly behind this view, the street sweeps to the east, down the hill and under the Banfield for access to the U-Storage building, which is the old Doernbecher Furniture Factory.
Looking west along the Banfield Expressway (Interstate 84). Google Streetview image.
The Sullivans knew the area when it was a wild and somewhat remote place. But after their passing, when the railroad arrived in the spring of 1882, builders began to fill in the lower part of the Gulch to make way for the rails and to protect from Willamette River floodwaters. They also built the first steel bridge across the Willamette, the Albina yards to the north, and lots of infrastructure.
Here’s, a birds-eye view from 1890 looking west. This map was produced to market properties in Ben Holladay’s addition, which as we can see just happens to be at the center of the Portland universe. The red arrow indicates the location of the old Sullivan Homestead–and a water source / favorite bucolic picnic grounds known as Sullivan’s Springs–near today’s intersection of NE 19th and NE Pacific Street.
Oregon Real Estate Company birdseye view, 1890. Courtesy of Portland City Archives, A2010-015
And just because we’re a little crazy for old maps and photos—and on the chance you might not already know about it—below is an amazing photograph from 1903, one of 14 tiles in a giant panorama called the Henrichsen Panorama, looking right at the mouth of the Gulch in 1903. You could spend an hour looking at this photo and its 13 siblings, but we’ve pointed out a few places on this one panel just for orientation, and to help you visualize this landscape before things really exploded on the eastside.
The Henrichsen panorama, one of 14 images taken in 1903. Courtesy of Portland City Archives. Image A2004-002.3575.
Arrival of the railroad ushered in a whole new wave of change for the Gulch and for Portland, including the siting of heavy manufacturing right alongside the rails for easy transfer and shipment. In our next post, we’ll explore the tension between industrial use in the Gulch and growing residential use in the uplands to the north and south.
We’ve recently completed short biographies of six more builders responsible for many of our homes on Portland’s eastside and beyond. The section here on the blog called The Builders now has profiles of 18 builders responsible for thousands of homes, mostly built between 1910-1950.
Builders working on an eastside bungalow in the early 1900s. Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society, Negative 37092.
Through our research, we’ve been able to make contact with many of the builders’ families and have added photos and other biographical information that provide a glimpse of the builders’ lives. Included with each biography is a list of addresses of homes by each builder.
One common theme emerges when you read these: most of the builders were immigrants, many of them from Russia and from Scandanavia. All have interesting stories.
Alameda Old House History 