Tag Archives: Then and now

Remembering the landmark at 33rd and Webster | Old St. Charles Church

February 22, 2019 By in Concordia, Historic News Clippings, Lost Buildings, Memories, Then and Now Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

For more than 40 years, a dignified and simple clapboard-sided wood frame church presided over the corner of NE 33rd Avenue and Webster, serving as a local landmark for its parishioners and for the neighborhood that was steadily growing up around it.

Old St. Charles Church, March 1931. Looking southeast at the corner of NE 33rd and Webster. Note that 33rd (at right) is paved, Webster (to the left) is not paved. Photo courtesy of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon Archives. 

The original St. Charles Catholic Church has been gone now for almost 70 years and recollections about its life and times are slipping close to the edge of living memory. The parish relocated to its current home on NE 42nd in 1950 and demolished the original building. But when you know where it once stood and its place in the evolution of the Concordia, Vernon, Cully and Beaumont-Wilshire area, you’ll want to keep it alive in your own imagination and sense of place.

Let’s put the ghost of this old building on the map: Webster is the east-west street intersecting NE 33rd Avenue just north of Alberta and just south of today’s New Seasons Concordia grocery store. The church was sited with its long side adjacent to Webster, and front doors and stairs facing 33rd, right at the corner.

Detail of 1940 aerial photo showing location of original St. Charles Church at the southeast corner of NE 33rd Avenue and Webster Street. Photo courtesy of University of Oregon Map and Aerial Photography Library.

In February 2019, construction is underway on the site: a three-story 12-plex apartment building, which is being built pretty much in the footprint of where the church stood from 1916 until its demolition in 1950. In fact, while excavating recently for new footings, workers came across parts of the foundation and basement slab of the old church.

Looking southeast at the corner of NE 33rd and Webster, February 2019 (above). The same view in much earlier years (below), photo courtesy of St. Charles Parish Archive Committee.

 

Below is the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map plate from 1924 that will give you a good snapshot of where the building stood (upper left hand corner), and just how sparsely built up the surrounding area was then (click to enlarge the view). Read more and see other old photos in this recent post about the intersection of 33rd and Killingsworth, this post about Ainsworth and 33rd, and this post about the old fire station one block south at Alberta Court and 33rd.

 

Knowing what you know now about the prominent role local property owner John D. Kennedy played in shaping the area from 1900-1930 (his early influence can’t be overstated), you won’t be surprised to learn the church building and the entire St. Charles Catholic Parish trace its founding back to him. Parish historians Jeanne Allen and Joseph Schiwek Jr. both credit Kennedy with encouraging then Archbishop Alexander Christie to found St. Charles Parish in the first place, sometime in late 1913. Kennedy did all he could (including providing property for a public school) to create a community from the surrounding rural landscape.

In March 1915, the Catholic Sentinel newspaper characterized the area and its scattered population like this:

“This parish, which is in sparsely settled territory in the northeast portion of the city is made up of earnest workers.”

Said a little less carefully, everyone knew this area was out in the middle of nowhere in comparison to the rest of Portland proper, and that most of the people who lived here were immigrants and first-generation citizens from Italy, Ireland and Germany.

The newly founded St. Charles Parish congregation of 25 families held its first mass on February 3, 1914, in a grocery store built and owned by Henry Hall near the corner of NE Alberta and 32nd Place. Here’s a look at that old store, which stands today. It’s one of the older buildings on Alberta Street, by the way, dating to 1911. The congregation held mass there every Sunday from February 1914 until the completed church was dedicated and opened on October 1, 1916.

3266 NE Alberta (formerly 986 East Alberta before Portland’s addressing system was changed in 1931), originally known as the Hall building and later as Herliska Grocery. Photographed in February 2019. High mass was said here every Sunday between 1914-1916. The building is one of the oldest in this section of NE Alberta.

News stories during that interim reported on the new building’s planning and construction, sharing details from Portland architects Houghtaling and Dougan about the 40’ x 80’ wood frame building with its full concrete basement hall (think potluck dinners and parish events), including this rendering (we particularly like the clouds):

From The Oregonian, June 4, 1916

The church steeple, rising some 50 feet above the street, didn’t turn out quite like the rendering: an octagonal tower with cross was built instead of the traditional peaked steeple. Here’s another view, from sometime in the 1940s.

Photo courtesy of St. Charles Parish Archive Committee

The dedication was covered by The Oregonian, the Oregon Journal and the Catholic Sentinel. All three newspapers noted the church building was just the first phase of construction that would eventually include a parish school and a rectory.

By 1918, with help from John D. Kennedy, the parish bought the two lots immediately to the south with the future in mind: one was vacant and the other held a house that became the rectory. A growing number of young people in the St. Charles parish—many of whom traveled to St. Andrews at NE 9th and Alberta and some to The Madeleine at 24th and Klickitat—had hopes of a school closer to home and the congregation was doing everything it could to save and raise money.

These photos show the rectory (inset) and its location two lots south of the church. You can see the northwest corner of the rectory at far right in the larger photo. From The Catholic Sentinel, March 4, 1939. The rectory was moved to the new site on NE 42nd in 1950, and destroyed by fire in 1978.

But in 1924, the parish experienced a major setback when an overnight fire on June 27th did significant damage to the church building, altar, pews, statues and paintings that added up to almost $3,500: a major loss that would not soon be overcome.

The origin of the fire was disputed at first (fire investigators not really wanting to talk about arson) but then emerged in the stranger-than-fiction tale of Portland firefighter Chester Buchtel. A capable firefighter from an established Portland pioneer family, Buchtel admitted to setting at least 16 fires in 1923-1924–destroying Temple Beth Israel and the German Lutheran Church, both downtown, the St. Charles Church, lumber mills, garages and barns city wide–and causing more than $1 million in damage.

Repairs were made and the building was rededicated on November 23, 1924, but the wind was out of the sails for any school development fund, which continued to be the case through the Great Depression years and beyond.

Parish historian Schiwek picks up the story in the mid 1940s at the end of World War 2, from his book, Building a House Where Love Can Dwell: Celebrating the first 100 years of the St. Charles Borromeo Parish, 1914-2014:

“There were now thousands of GIs coming home to start life afresh with new homes and new families. Such was the case in Northeast Portland. Many new houses were built as families moved into the parish, with the result that by 1950, the old church, that was only capable of seating 300 persons, was fast becoming obsolete. Moreover, demand for a school was increasing and there was no land available at the existing site to build one. There were over 300 Catholic children in the parish at this time and at least half of them were attending neighboring parish schools that were themselves overcrowded and the rest were in public schools without any religious education.”

In the spring of 1950, Archbishop Edward Howard made a change in parish leadership. By that summer, the parish had obtained a site and was into construction on the St. Charles school and campus that exists today 12 blocks east at NE 42nd and Emerson. The old rectory was jacked up from the lot south of the old church and trucked to the new site in a careful two-day moving process.

The final mass at the old church was held on October 15, 1950. A photograph was taken from the church balcony to document the end of an era. And on October 22, the new St. Charles was dedicated with mass held in temporary quarters on the new site until the new church building could be completed in 1954.

Photo courtesy of St. Charles Parish Archive Committee

Long-time parishioner Jeanne Allen remembers that while there was excitement about the move to a new site and anticipation about the brand-new school and fresh start as a community, leaving the old building was hard on some of the established families who had known it all their lives. So many family events—baptisms, weddings, funerals and every Sunday in between—took place there at the corner of NE 33rd and Webster.

“There was something very comforting about the inside of the old church,” she recalled recently. “It was simple, dignified, spiritual.”

With the parish installed in its new quarters, the old church was demolished, likely sometime in 1950. No parish records remain about the demolition and property sale, nothing in the newspapers and no one we’ve spoken to remembers those final actions.

Photo courtesy of St. Charles Parish Archive Committee

Time travel at 15th and Killingsworth

April 1, 2017 By in Business History, Neighborhood History, Old Photos, Photo Detective, Then and Now Tags: , , , , 11 Comments

We came across a great old photo recently of a proud apron-clad businessman standing, arms crossed, in front of his market at the corner of NE 15th and Killingsworth. It’s a photo worth having a look at. We’ve been staring at it for a while to puzzle through some of its riddles.

Photo courtesy of Portland City Archives, image A2008-001.39

First, there is no identification. Who is this proud man? Second, there’s a spelling conflict: is it Loyd’s (as the window suggests) or Lloyd’s (as the shingle suggests), and how did that happen? What did Loyd’s sell? And when you really look at the picture you understand it’s actually two businesses: Gwaltney’s Red and White Market where the watermelons and cigarettes are for sale, and Loyd’s (or Lloyd’s, depending on which sign you read). Can you hear the spring in the screen door when it opens, and the door smacking back into the frame as it closes?

We do know where it is: the southwest corner of Killingsworth and 15th. Loyd’s was 608 and Gwaltney’s was 610. After some research, it became clear to us that the main entrance to Gwaltney’s was off the picture to the left, at the corner. More on that in a moment. These addresses translate to 1478 Killingsworth today. Remember, all of Portland was readdressed in 1931, so we know this photo was taken before that. We’re guessing 1929-1930. Built in 1927, the building still stands. A look back through permit history shows many chapters and changes: market, pharmacy, restaurant, tavern, pool hall, rented rooms upstairs, and now office space.

Here’s a look at that same view today. The portico is gone, the front of the building looks like it has been pushed out a bit, the grass is gone and Killingsworth has been widened, putting the early vantage point almost into the street. See for yourself:

1478 NE Killingsworth, March 2017

Next is the question of who this gentleman is. We believe this is actually Mr. Loyd in front of his store, not Mr. Gwaltney (who would have been posing in front of his own front door somewhere off the picture to the left). With the help of the Polk City Directories, census records and a few other genealogy tools, we believe this man is John F. Loyd (only one “L”). From 1929-1939 he ran a meat market at this address. For some of those years his son Clarence helped out in the shop. Loyd lived on Dupont Street near the Broadway Bridge (now gone under the Portland Public Schools building–Dupont no longer exists) with his wife Alma and children Clarence, Ruby and Lester. He was a WW1 veteran. John and Alma were born in Sweden and immigrated to the US in 1900.

Willis H. Gwaltney was the shopkeeper at the Red and White Store, off to the left. Gwaltney and his wife Martha lived just around the corner on NE 16th. He spent a career in the grocery business, his last assignment being at the Kienows on SE 39th and Lincoln. In the 1930s, Red and White markets were everywhere. Each was independently owned: shopkeepers could buy Red and White branded merchandise, marketing materials and even store shelving. In the mid 1930s, there were 6,700 Red and White markets nationally. We had several in the neighborhood…more on that in a future post. Gwaltney’s shows up in the Polk City Directory at this address from 1929-1933, when Willis moved on, likely a victim of the changing economy.

While out taking pictures of this building, which in 2017 is the home of Portland/East Metro Habitat for Humanity, we decided to knock on the door and share this picture with the current occupants. The very friendly Tim, who was at the front desk there, was welcoming and excited to see Mr. Loyd. Tim wanted to share an old picture of his own and took us into the back room to see a large format framed photo of the building hanging on the wall, shown below. The timeframe for this one is a bit later.

The Oakhurst Pharmacy is listed in city directories from 1940-1948, and if you look at the passerby’s hat, the ads in the window, the style of street sign, that timeframe fits. Gwaltney’s is gone. Lloyds is gone and the “welcome to my front door” sense of entering the building on that side has changed, Mr. Loyd’s proud perch now covered up with an awning and boxes. The street has been widened and grass replaced with concrete. Looks like they must have had a leaky roof too, the valley of that far gable reinforced with flashing. Here it is:

1478 NE Killingsworth, about 1945. Photo courtesy of Habitat for Humanity Portland/East Metro

March 2017

Oakhurst, by the way, is the name of the platted addition just west of the Vernon area between Killingsworth and Ainsworth from 14th to 19th, originally platted in 1892. We’re betting that name has faded away like so many of Portland’s other plats. Have you ever heard someone talking about Oakhurst? We haven’t.

Back then, Lee Witty was proprietor of the Oakhurst Pharmacy and he must have been a resilient person: the pharmacy appears multiple times in The Oregonian during his eight years in stories about several armed robberies, a fire that damaged part of the building, and even a major accident in March 1947. Check it out:

From The Oregonian, March 10, 1947

How much longer will this building last? Good question. It has certainly seen its share of change. Uncovering its story, like all the research we do, is about as close to time travel as we can get.

Beaumont 1927 Construction Photo Series

December 29, 2015 By in Beaumont-Wilshire, Business History, Old Photos, Photo Detective Tags: , , , Leave a comment

Four more tantalizing views of the Beaumont corner at 42nd and Fremont from the late 1920s (we think June 1927), all showing some major trenching and dirt-moving activity out in front of the shops on the north side of the street. All four are from the collection of Beaumont Dry Goods shopkeeper Bessie Kramer and her grandson Paul Kirkland. If you need help orienting yourself, we’ve placed current companion views to each of these at the bottom of this post.

You’ll recall from our earlier posts that Bessie Kramer ran the Beaumont Dry Goods and Book Shelf store in the 1930s, which—based on Polk City Directory records—we believe started out life as Fremont Dry Goods in 1927 here on the north side of Fremont, about where today’s Americana Frame shop is now, and later moved with a name and ownership change to the south side, where Shop Adorn is today, when construction of that building was finished in the fall of 1928.

Incidentally, we’re mapping the comings and goings of Beaumont’s various businesses over the years, and doing some homework on the Beaumont Market/Gazelle commercial building on the south side of Fremont at 41st (which is actually two buildings built seven years apart) so stay tuned for that. If you have photos or insights to contribute on the general topic of Beaumont business over the years, we’d love to hear from you. In the meantime, have a good look at the images below which we believe were shot all about the same time (click on each one for a larger view), and when you’re done, come back here for some discussion.

Beaumont Construction 1

East view

Let’s start by orienting ourselves here. Look carefully at the address over the door of the shop to the left, which is Fremont Dry Goods, 1213 East Fremont Street North. You can’t quite see the business name in the upper left, but you’ll see it in the next photograph. It reads “Fremont Dry Goods.” After Portland’s Great Renumbering in 1931, that address became 4223 NE Fremont, today’s Americana Frame. Next door to the right, at today’s 4225 NE Fremont, is Fremont Pharmacy, home of ice cream, cigars, drugs and on this day lots of fireworks. The pharmacy business shown here, (which moved across the street in 1929 and became a neighborhood fixture in the shop occupied by today’s Gazelle) is known to us today as Silhouette, a tailoring shop. There are two more businesses out of frame to the left–Buy Rite Grocery and Beaumont Hardware–but we’ll get to those in a moment. Click here to keep reading…

Then and Now | Criticize this house

December 27, 2015 By in Beaumont-Wilshire, Builders, Historic News Clippings, Old Photos, Then and Now Tags: , , , 3 Comments

A brief pause from the Beaumont photos here on AH to make a deep dive into back copies of The Oregonian and other research into several stories we’re working on, and to learn more about the early Beaumont business district. Interesting stuff, so stay tuned.

It’s always easy for us to lose ourselves in the serendipity of research, especially during the quiet days at the end of the year.

While looking for other things, we’ve come across some small gems. Here’s one from September 2, 1928: It’s either an interesting approach to real estate advertising, or a clever form of early market research, or both. It also makes for a good Then and Now. Check it out:

9-2-1928 House criticism ad (1)

 

4404 NE Cesar Chavez Blvd

926 East 39th Street North is today’s 4404 NE Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, in northeast Portland’s Wilshire neighborhood.

Margaret Gray Montgomery took out several other classified advertisements during this period, including one that advertised her office being located at 910 East 40th Street North (4324 NE 40th). A site office in addition to the Porter Building address? Curiously, Margaret Gray Montgomery didn’t appear in city directories as a builder or otherwise connected to the real estate business, wasn’t listed as owner of this or the 40th Street property in construction or city records, and was invisible to the federal census of 1930 and 1940. For what it’s worth, the 11th floor of the Porter building (see bottom of ad) was a hot spot for real estate and mortgage companies in the late 1920s.

As a postscript with a story to tell: a three-line classified ad in the March 30, 1931 The Oregonian, sandwiched between other ads about house foreclosures and repossessed furniture, reports:

Crawford Range for sale, also dining room rug and Hoover; will sacrifice, leaving city tomorrow evening. Also equity in beautiful home, 926 E. 39th N.

Hmm.

Then and Now | 2445 SE Hawthorne

November 13, 2015 By in Then and Now Tags: 4 Comments

Our friend Irene wrote the other day to share a picture of her grandparents’ home on SE Hawthorne: a beautiful, three-story Crafstman, built in 1910. She had the original street address (797) from before Portland’s Great Renumbering, which took place between 1931-1933. And she had a picture. That’s more than we often get to begin our old house history detective work, so it didn’t take much digging before we were ready to set out in the rain to connect past and present.

Here’s the photo pair:

FullSizeRender (4)2445 SE Hawthorne Close

Kind of hard to line up exactly in the footsteps of the photographer. Hawthorne has definitely been widened over the years and the traffic in that stretch today is not interested in slowing down. Plus, the trees and bushes have pretty much taken over the house. You have to look hard for the graceful lines. The distinctive overhanging eaves, the row of dentals at the top of the second story, the columns and robust brick pedestals, the porch baluster. All are still there, but fading. When we visited recently, we noted a large group of young men exiting the house heading out in the neighborhood, which made us think it might be a group home. Chances are the interior has been divided up into many small apartment rooms.

Irene’s mother Phyllis Jones was born into the house, which at the time was occupied by two generations of the Jones family—both shipbuilders and real estate investors. The elder: Rome Volti Jones and his wife Lulu Bennett Jones; the younger: Robert V. Jones and his wife Luella (this sounds like a researcher’s minefield with multi-generational names so similar). The Jones family moved to Pasadena in 1921, and sold the house to Peter Connacher, a lumberman, from Yacolt, Washington: a Pacific Northwest logging family name we definitely know.

Mystery solved. Next?

Then and Now | “Dad & Lois” Long Ago

November 30, 2014 By in Memories, Neighborhood History, Neighborhood Mysteries, Photo Detective, Then and Now Tags: , , 3 Comments

AH reader and fellow old-picture lover Chris Wilson has shared this photograph, found last year at a yard sale near Rocky Butte. Click on it for a close-up look. Lot’s of detail, including the original pre-address change address of 605 (on the column above the dad’s head).

2835 NE 55th

Our only clue: written on the back is “Dad & Lois at home place.” We love mysteries like this. With a little digging we’ve found this house in the Rose City Park neighborhood (not too far from Archbishop Howard School) known today as 2835 NE 55th Avenue. This stately Portland four-square was built in 1910. Apparently, Chris Wilson may have offered it to the current homeowners, who reportedly weren’t interested. So he wrote us, knowing that we love photos of old houses (especially with people in them), and that we love to solve old house and old picture mysteries.

Here it is today:

2835 NE 55th Today

After looking back at building permits, census records and a little deductive reasoning, our hunch is that this is Christopher J. (Dad) and Lois Schmiedeskamp. In the teens and early 1920s, the family owned and operated a grocery store and meat market at 7224 NE Sandy Blvd., right next to Fairley’s Pharmacy (home today to Berni’s Beauty Salon). Later, CJ went into real estate and mortgage banking.

Also at home around the time of the old photo were mom Mildred, brothers Charles and Karl, and sister Edith.

A quick look at the phone book today suggests the Schmiedeskamps are still in Portland. We’re guessing they could be interested in seeing this yard-sale-salvaged photo of their old home place.

Bring on the next mystery!

Alameda Then and Now

January 2, 2014 By in Old Photos, Then and Now Tags: 2 Comments

In the course of research over the years, we’ve come across quite a few pictures of neighborhood homes, which we’ve always squirreled away into the archive for some future use. Many of them are grainy, some are half-toned from old newspapers. Some have coffee spilled on them. Each one tells a story, particularly when paired with a contemporary photo of the same view.

With the start of the new year, we’re inaugurating a regular feature that we call “Alameda Then and Now” to plumb the archive a bit and explore how time has changed the face of the neighborhood (or not, in some cases). The rule is that the then picture has to be before 1962, and the earlier the better. We’ll be pulling from our archive and will do our best to stay within the footprint of the Alameda Park plat. If you have images we should consider, please pass them along.

We’ve created a category here on the blog, and a menu button on the top right which you can use to check back on the growing collection.

Like a family’s picture album, the faces of our homes contain precious tales of our life and times.

This pair is a little eerie, like the family just stepped out of the frame.  The house, located on NE 30th Avenue, is substantially the same as when it was built in 1912. In the top photo, the Morrison family gathers on their front porch, about 1920. Below, the same view today. The wooden steps are long gone and the columns and porch walls have been restored, but the decorative rafter tails, door, windows and siding are the same this family knew almost 100 years ago. Click on each image for a larger view.

Stay tuned for the then and now next pair…

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